Everything the current US administration has done has been an unmitigated disaster. Tariffs are taxes. Manufacturing is still declining, not returning and a man who could not run casinos successfully is not going to change that. His economic and foreign policy are dictated entirely based on who flatters him the most. Add to that continued environmental damage, domestic policy dictated by a regressive religious minority and a lack of interest in performing the duties of the position in favor of caring about only what it can be leveraged for. A failing state operating on grievances and stupidity.
> Economic activity in the manufacturing sector expanded in July for the seventh consecutive month, say the nation’s supply executives in the latest ISM® Manufacturing PMI® Report.
> The report was issued today by Susan Spence, MBA, Chair of the Institute for Supply Management® (ISM®) Manufacturing Business Survey Committee.
> “The Manufacturing PMI® registered 55.6 percent in July, 2.3 percentage points above the June figure and the highest reading since May 2022 (55.9 percent). The overall economy continued in expansion for the 21st month in a row.
Manufacturing has never really declined in US, not in absolute terms.
It's simply facing the same fate of agriculture: automation.
Politicians want to sell to people they can bring back manufacturing jobs, but it's not like in china they making cars or batteries or chips by hand. It's all automated everywhere.
Every founder I know in manufacturing is thankful for this admin. There is a ton of invested interest in not having tariffs or a pro-manufacturing industrial policy as a lot of people got rich shipping it overseas. For some reason this is all ignored because the president is a very unpopular person (for obvious reasons)
What are they manufacturing? It must not involve any metal. Due to the tariffs on metals manufacturing costs have increased significantly for anyone using them.
As someone who grew up in a machine shop, still in manufacturing, and have my own hobby shop, its gross how much raw materials cost. I can get finished parts shipped from China cheaper then I can buy the raw material here in the US. I almost wept looking at over $500 for a simple 2x4 foot sheet of 1/2 inch thick 6061 aluminum.
Inconel is through the roof and I know a few aerospace clients who are MONTHS behind due to shortages and bonkers material costs. Like holding up the military supply chain which is ludicrous. This admin is brain dead.
Then every founder you know has no idea how policy should be done. There’s a difference between having a pro manufacturing policy and applying tariffs and trade wars ad hoc based on how you feel slighted and giving no warning to any businesses nor having any sort of stability to your plans for any sort of appreciable time in the future. Also, the whole announced news on Friday changed it on the next week so that whoever is betting on the stock market can make some money also is not great for a pro manufacturing base. It’s all a grift and your buddies are dupes to believe in it.
Everybody I know in construction, especially larger scale, is losing their minds because nobody can bid on jobs without risking loosing their shirts. Tariffs could hit somewhere between the bid and the time the job starts and could increase material costs by 150-200% and could cause more delays. It's been like this for 2 years or so and they're losing their minds.
Tariffs have been hell for marina renovation work I'm associated with. Things paid for well in advance have exploded way past their budgets thanks to all the raw material costing so much more. Thanks to Trump.
Even the MAGA folks I have to deal with are bitter about it. They still voted for Trump but they can't deny the cause and effect. I think they'd still vote for Trump though. I don't understand how they manage to deal with the cognitive dissonance.
Really? I know people in the hardware space for whom the tariffs have been an unmitigated disaster. They had to go through a lot to not lose their customer base outside the US. I have seen many US-people with businesses swearing about that admin, especially the smaller ones.
Uh, I'm in manufacturing in the US and EU. Can confirm the tariffs are a total disaster. It's increasingly difficult and expensive to ship raw materials and components to the US!
"Just find US suppliers."
It's not that simple. There are a lot of things that simply aren't made in the US. (The majority of tool steels, all titanium alloys, everything made of tungsten, and I could go on all day.)
Besides, dealing with the Chinese is like life on easy mode. Handshake agreements are always respected. In most cases service and support are 24/7. Importantly for QoL, they never make you fill out a dozen forms, pay for a D&B report, "let's get on a Zoom call to touch base," and all of that nonsense. American B2B firms aren't really into customer service, as a general rule, I think.
it's remarkable how much presentation can distort ppls judgment .. they'll actually admire narcissistic behaviour as long as its wrapped in a polished and presentable package (the ex PM of cananda) and yet label the less polished, ill mannered person with common sense as the narcissist ..
>His economic and foreign policy are dictated entirely based on who flatters him the most
Are you sure, it seems mostly based on illegal share trading. Murdering foreigners and sending soldiers to die is a lever Trump/his handlers keep pulling because they 'win' $millions every time.
I'm not sure how old you are, but shortly after Obama took office in 2009 there was quite a bit of reporting claiming that the Bush administration had been so disastrous and young people had been so thoroughly poisoned by Republican policies, that it would likely be a generation before the Republicans had the chance to win the presidency again. Remember, Bush left office in the depths of the Great Recession. Instead, it took less than 8 years for us to get MAGA.
They didn't in the last couple. Those elections went 49% vs 51%. I don't hold out a lot of hope for the next couple. They feign surprise, but it isn't like it was a mystery as to what he was going to do. He campaigned on everything he is doing.
Which should inform the credibility of anyone declaring one issue or another would definitely motivate voters to come out and vote for whatever policy they want to say is a winner: the last two elections, despite enormous new voter activation, the split in preference followed polling trends anyway.
The great fiction of American politics at this point seems to be the belief that the non-voting population are definitely an election margin who'll definitely come and vote for you provided you support <commentators preferred policy here>.
They won't. I have industrial clients who are financially eating shit from all this and they have posters of Trump hanging on their office wall while extolling his antics. The workers think the same way. We're boned unless these morons wake up (they won't.)
Voters don’t go and actually look at the data themselves. They rely on pundits and the news to tell them the salient points.
The problem is that the media has essentially lost most of its usefulness as a bulwark against the most egregious excesses of crony capitalism and cozied up to it instead. It feels like the Gilded Age again, but the people are somehow more insufferable. Cramming the “light of human consciousness into the stars” apparently requires we create CSAM generating machines powered by nitrogen oxide belching gas turbines. Even the folks at non-profit news outlets like Pro Publica have leadership that refuses to understand that it is difficult to prevent AI errors at scale. Nobody reviews drafts with such detail, we make a lot of assumptions, we trust that the person/machine is not feeding us trash.
This is, of course, doesn’t even bring up the fact that a lot of people in the US now get their news—similar to folks in India via WhatsApp (that became such a problem that Meta was forced to curtail the number of forwards you could do in the app)—by passing trash, hate fueling articles around on social media.
In essence we took the grand market place of ideas, and then let it get completely owned by a few firms.
The media, where it isn’t outright compromised, is dying to survive on any revenue stream. local news outlets which are the backbone of solving actual Issues for citizen are not profitable and dying.
We have platforms, which instead incentivize for the largest viewer count, so local content is sacrificed at the altar of the zeitgeist.
Social issues are just as important to voters as the economy and attacking them for caring about this issue, one that very clearly the people have asserted their opinion on, is dumb. If dems would stop dying in the hill of unpopular social policies they’d be winning more elections.
It's Republicans who are dying on the hill of unpopular policies. Nobody cares about men in womens sports to the point of dying from diarrhea or closing shop.
If dems would stop dying in the hill of unpopular social policies they’d be winning more elections.
I don't disagree, fundamentally, but the voters are prioritizing minor issues that affect one in a million people over major issues that affect everyone. That's not good judgement, it's stupidity. It's why wedge issues work so well.
I don't think it's helpful to suggest that "both sides" are equal in American politics, but I do think you have to be a least a little understanding that the democrats aren't an attractive alternative to most Americans. I'm afraid a pretty large minority of Americans have landed in the lose-lose position of "if i can't make it better, i might as well make it worse faster".
My Bangladeshi immigrant mom and her sister are complaining on Facebook that they were "good Democrats" until "Obama, AOC, and Bernie" brought their "radicalism." Democrats wave away this stuff as "performative," but people feel it viscerally and it subdivides and splits the coalition.
Most people don't vote based on policies and data. They are naturally skeptical about whether your five-point plans are actually going to have the intended effect. Instead, they vote based on their assessment of your judgment and whether you broadly share their ideas about what "good" and "bad" are.
Anyone who says Obama, of all people, was radical clearly listens to too much Fox News and conservative talk radio (which is an entirely different problem).
The only way Obama was objectively radical as a politician and president was the color of his skin.
My mom watches CNN and liked Obama as President. But my parsing of her comment—I haven’t talked to her about it, just saw it pop up when my aunt responded “me too, sister”—is that she views Obama as the patriarch so the buck stops with him to police the party messaging.
This is maybe an odd view for an American but it makes sense within a Bangladeshi social context. And democrats are the ones who chose to cultivate an electoral map based on immigrants like my mom in states like Virginia and Michigan.
> they vote based on their assessment of your judgment and whether you broadly share their ideas about what "good" and "bad" are.
You can't really simplify it to such a degree. I believe humans are creatures of action. We like it when things happen. Sometimes, not all the time but sometimes, our morals are downstream of that desire to "be effective". We will align ourselves, no matter the violence we have to do to our own senses, with what is useful.
Specifically, their willingness to skeptically engage with your five-point plan demands that you're actually able to execute it. If you categorically can't make anything happen, then people will cling to an explanation and a morality that can. American democracy has been at a standstill for upwards of 30 years, If the American people have to believe that all their politicians are pedophiles to get some sort of movement again. Then that's what they are going to believe.
According to polls democrats are the worse side, they are the most unpopular party maybe in history and are at an extreme low in terms of their approval rating. Trump is almost 20% more popular than the Democratic Party and they are polling below AI and ICE, they are right around the same approval rating with the American people as Iran.
And still they refuse to back down on a number of policies that have been proven to be extremely unpopular.
Part of that is because progressives also hate the Democrats for being hypocritical and/or ineffective. Doesn't mean they're going to vote for an R, though.
Not based on the special election results the past year, and primary turnout along with gains in polling numbers of Democrats compared to their Republican counterparts. Just look at Texas, Maine, Ohio, North Carolina, Alaska, Iowa, even Kansas. Bunch of red seats in play.
This is where the democrats need to smarten up. They should be hammering “tax and spend” Trump, 24x7.
The baseline Republican base doesn’t give a shit about the more extreme racist stuff, they don’t care about women being raped, etc they tolerate it. But they hate paying taxes above all else.
Trump closed the stretch IRA loophole in 45, and implemented the largest tax increase in recent history with the tariff regime. Only the really rich people and real estate folks get the big tax breaks.
If someone asks Chuck Schumer what the weather is like, he should say: “It’s a good summer day, but it would be a great one if tax and spend Trump released the Epstein files”
I'd argue more largely that the right is a loose coalition of people with differing goals...whether it's conservatism, lower taxes, anti immigration, religious right, etc. I'm reminded how my econ professor would say that hardened bootleggers and hardcore Christians would pretend to be friends just long enough to vote to keep alcohol illegal.
I feel like the Dems should have an easy time in the next elections if they don't fumble it given the current state of things. On the other hand, they seem to purity test each other in ways that make such a coalition harder to attain.
The Republican base doesn’t give a shit about “tax and spend” either. For all their hand-wringing about deficit spending, Republican administrations have for decades been the party of excessive spending and ballooning deficits.
They’ve demonstrated over and over that their core principles don’t actually exist, and are simply maxims that they have heard often enough that they blindly parrot them back.
Huh? Check out the Twitter feeds of your favorite Republican or Republican-aligned personalities. It's racial or nationalistic dog whistles all day every day.
The weak kneed leadership will be getting replaced by the populist message of Trump but coming from the left, people like Mamdani, the DSA candidates, etc.
The people clearly want leaders who will say : we will use political tools to help the economic situation of the poor and middle class.
Everyone from Jon Ossoff to Angie Nixon has some version of this message and its resonating
Trump and MAGA also won elections. My point is winning with a shitty plan is not smartening up, unless your only goal is winning the current election. The Republicans committed suicide, we saw it live.
DSA are not "democrats". DSA's agenda is socialism via the democratic process (vs. with a violent revolution, the way we typically get there). There is nothing between their agenda and principles and those of the traditional Democrats. The DSA wants to abolish the existing US democratic process.
Socialism (to contrast with social-democrats like some European nations which are primarily democracies, free markets, with a social component) is not a democracy those are opposing ideas.
> The DSA wants to abolish the existing US democratic process.
That reads as though you’re saying they want to abolish the democratic process, but as somebody living in a country with many of the democratic processes they’re proposing, looking in on what seems like a very dysfunctional democratic process in the US, it seems to be that they want to replace it with a much better version of itself.
You can't just go and change everything. There are always unexpected consequences.
The US process is far from ideal. I agree with that. I'm not American and looking from the outside there's a lot of head scratching I can do.
But- It's worked pretty well over the last few hundred years. You can't just take that and throw it in the garbage and replace it with some "workers will decide" socialist mumbo-jumbo.
Seriously. It doesn't work. You can't say let's take Germany's process and apply it in the US. It won't work. We should know better. There is a delicate balance of power (arguably already somewhat disrupted) and there is a culture and a history. That's why we also can't just bring "democracy" to non-democratic countries that easily.
The DSA are saying let's break everything and then figure it out. It won't work. We need responsible adults not revolutionaries to fix things with care.
I think most of us want a moderate Democrat. I hope populism dies with Trump/MAGA in the coming years. We don’t need to match them with our own distasteful populism.
CHAZ was an idealistic symptom of applying John Lennon's Imagine to a neighborhood of Seattle, and it wasn't the only city tempted by this endeavor (if only it didn't finish with an arms dealer taking leadership of the locality);
"Defund the police" was a campaign slogan at last election.
I'm looking from Europe and I'm often impressed how extreme american leftists are. If it's not socialism, it sure shares the same conclusions. And yet "The most extreme left in the US is the most extreme right wing for Europe" is a common belief.
>I'm looking from Europe and I'm often impressed how extreme american leftists are.
I am often impressed how abusive and violent US policemen are. And they have budgets rivaling the defense spending of whole countries and are armed to the teeth with military grade equipment.
Clearly a social component can exist within a democracy, European nations are an example of this? Are there any proposals more radical than European-adjacent style social policies?
As a citizen of one of the European countries you mentioned, let me tell you: The DSA would run as a center-left party in pretty much the entire union. You have—respectfully—not a clue what socialism means, because the DSA agenda has absolutely nothing in common with communism in the first place.
I disagree. When I moved from Finland to the US, I was surprised to find how popular actual "abolish private property" style socialism was among young Americans. I hanged out with leftist people when I was a student, and I kind of knew many of the people who eventually ended up running the Left Alliance (the main left-wing party). My impression was that they had all accepted free markets as a necessary evil, rather than advocating for the socialism of their predecessors. But it looks like Finnish students have started adopting American socialist ideas in the recent years.
Bernie is probably the most well-known democratic socialist in the US, but he is not a member of DSA. By his political positions he would be either in the left wing of Finnish Social Democratic Party or in the mainstream of the Left Alliance. He would probably choose the Left Alliance, since it is more like a coalition of like-minded activists, while the party is the primary actor for the Social Democrats.
AOC, another well-known democratic socialist, would also fit in the Left Alliance. She is part of the moderate wing of DSA. But if you start looking into the ideological wing, you find plenty of actual socialists who would make Finnish mainstream leftists uncomfortable.
Respectfully does the government run the grocery stores in your European country? Is public transit free in your European country? Do your center-left parties advocate for abolition of your parliament and democratic processes? Do they talk about how the rich are the source of all evil? Have you studied the DSA agenda in depth?
And sure, there are also ideas like healthcare for all which I think are similar but that isn't really what the DSA is about. It's definitely not about transforming the USA to have a better social network like healthcare or protection for employees. It's a lot more radical than that.
Yes, they are center-left at best, and your frenzied rebuttal against regular people trying to improve their lives and the country they live in is alarming. Free public transportation..the horror.
Respectfully, you may have skimmed some material or watched a couple of minutes of MSNOW, because you wouldn't come to the conclusion that the DSA just wants free public transportation otherwise. Key aspects of the DSA's goals and the actual policy implementation actions of elected DSA-aligned politicians that are quite well aligned with the position of a person holding communist and other relatively extremist sympathies:
- state-controlled grocery stores [0]
- public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries [1]
- abolition in full of police and prisons ("cut police budgets annually toward zero") [1]
- ending sanctions on states backing terrorist activities [1]
- permitting open, uncontrolled immigration [2]
- disregarding the existence of Israel ("democratic secular state [Palestine], from the river to the sea") [3]
- giving voting rights to noncitizens and prisoners [4]
Free public tenant is very common. The wealthy being massive sources of the problem is very common. The U.K., hardly a bastion of socialist views, has massive amounts of food banks and he only attempt to overturn democracy I’ve seen was on Jan 6th 2021.
"The Democratic Socialists of America is the largest socialist organization in the United States, with over 100,000 members and chapters in all 50 states. We believe that working people should run both the economy and society democratically to meet human needs, not to make profits for a few."
"Capitalism is a system designed by the owning class to exploit the rest of us for their own profit. We must replace it with democratic socialism, a system where ordinary people have a real voice in our workplaces, neighborhoods, and society."
"democratic socialism" is an oxymoron. socialism conflicts directly with democratic values. At the very least there is no pre-existing example of democracy and socialism working side by side. All previous socialist "experiments" were not democracies.
Scandinavian countries you are referring to are practicing Social Democracy, they are not Democratic Socialist states.
In other words, Social Democrat != Democratic Socialist
Scandinavian model relies on competitive private enterprise to create wealth, combined with strong labor union collective bargaining, universal public services, and high consumption/income taxes that apply broadly across society.
DSA seeks to move past or dismantle the capitalist economic system, advocating for social, public, or worker ownership of the means of production.[1]
"We want to collectively own the key economic drivers that dominate our lives, such as energy production and transportation."
From the linked website. Now, that's not quite "the means of production", explicitly stated. It's just "the key economic drivers", so most of the means of production.
Maybe you ought to be a little less quick to accuse others of lying.
"Democratic Socialism" is VERY different from "Social Democracy"
In socialism with supposed democracy, where the state owns the means of production and supposedly the workers supposedly have a say about everything, they actually end up with a say about nothing (at least not without greasing the right palms in the inevitably corrupt system that arises).
In Social Democracy, capitalism is the underlying system, where corporations and workers can own means of production, but it operates under sufficient regulation that the excesses and systemic failures of captialism (e.g., failure to prevent Tragedies Of The Commons, tendency towards monopoly and excess concentration of power, consistent tendency to abuse and impoverish workers, etc.), you end up with successful systems like Northern Europe.
The two are very different, and we need to hold the DSA people to the latter and not let them sneak in the former.
They themselves literally say out loud that they want to abolish our existing institutions. If you want to debate that point, go debate the DSA candidates themselves.
> he populist message of Trump but coming from the left, people like Mamdani, the DSA candidates, etc.
Leading but honest question: Are those candidates the same as Trump? I do not see how they share anything other than strategy and spin, and those things don't make policy.
I really don't want people to be left with the impresion that this is Democratic Party incompetence. It is not. They are complicit in pretty much everything the Trump administration has been doing. They know what works. Just do what Obama did in 2008 and run on a populist economic platform. They don't want to do that. It's a choice, not incompetence.
If Chuck Schumer is asked about the weather, he'll first check with Netanyahu.
Just look at what Senatorial campaigns Schumer supports and doesn't. There's a lot of suspicion that Schumer (and the DSCC) is going to leave Abdul El-Sayed out to dry because he's anti-Israel, basically. Mandela Barnes got similar treatment in 2022. And yet you have blockbuster challenges like Jaime Harrison's, which spent $130M to oust Lindsey Graham. He lost by 10. Trump won by 12 so I guess he gained 2? Well done, everybody, the system works.
Oh and what did the DNC do with Jaime Harrison after he spent $130M to lose by 10? They made him the DNC Chair. The Democratic Party loves a loser. Just like Howard Dean.
The vast majority of sitting Democratic senators voted against funding for Israel this year.
The DSCC funding is a drop in the bucket of the overall funding in these races, and they have their own goals which may or may not be aligned with the party as a whole.
If your single issue is Israel funding (which it probably shouldn’t be but that is your choice), the Democratic Party and presidents did far more to reign in Israel’s behavior than republicans.
You need to realize just how performative most votes in Congress are. The Democrats, for example, will vote for all sorts of progressive policies when they know they won't pass. For example, Kamala Harris was a co-sponsor on a Medicare for All Bill. She didn't run on that in 2024. What's the difference? Well if she won in 2024, she might have to deliver on it. In 2019, Trump was in the White House so there's zero chance it would pass.
Republicans do this too. Two of the seats they're at most risk of losing are Maine and Alaska held by Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski (respectively). They currently have 53 votes (well, 52 with Mitch McConnell MIA). That means they can pass things with 50 votes (and JD Vance's tie break) on anything that can get past or doesn't require cloture (eg approving judicial nominations, reconcilation). So, every time you have a controversial nomination or bill, you'll often find Collins and Murkowski vote no because their votes aren't needed. The leadership is insulating them from attack. But when their votes are needed, they're there (eg Collins's required vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh).
As for the number of Democratic senators who voted against weapons for Israel, it is significant because it never would've happened 5 years ago, but it's also mostly performative because there's no way it was going to pass.
As another example, Democrats did a rare move to invoke the filibuster last year to stop ICE funding. This resulted in a government shutdown and important programs being punitively defunded (eg there was a reserve fund for food stamps that was intentionally not tapped). What happened? The Republicans needed 60 votes to force a vote. There were 52 votes. 8 Democratic senators crossed the floor to vote with Republicans. That's so weird. It's the exact number required. What a coincidence. Whatever that number was, 1, 5, 8, 12, it doesn't matter. There will most of the time be that number of exact senators requried. This, by the way, is part of the rotating villain role within the Democratic Party.
This is how calculated it was. All 8 of those who crossed the floor were either retiring or they weren't up for re-election in 2026 so the voters couldn't punish them. John Ossoff, the current liberal darling, was going to be one of the 8 but he's facing re-election this year so Chuck Schumer whipped another vote to replace him.
Another classic example was the Epstein transparency act. Trump threatened members who signed the discharge petition. Mike Johnson actually shut down the House for 7 weeks to try and get those that did to change their vote. yet when the discharge petition got 218 votes (the minimum required), suddenly the votes in the House and Senate were almost unanimous. Well, if support was almost unanimous, why not just have a vote to begin with?
Mitch McConnell can really be credited with pioneering a new era of obstruction in the Senate. He realized there was a political cost to some votes. Some things were popular and he didn't want to pass them so he'd just make sure they never made it to the floor for a vote.
So my point is that imagine the Democrats control the House, the Senate and the White House in 2029 and that same Israel funding bill came up. Will all those Senators and House representatives vote for it when it might pass and become law? Nope.
> The baseline Republican base doesn’t give a shit about the more extreme racist stuff, they don’t care about women being raped, etc they tolerate it. But they hate paying taxes above all else.
Honestly wild opinions to have. Watch 30 seconds of fox news. A significant chunk of their coverage is about protecting women and children from migrants/pedos/trans people. They want a tough on crime executive branch almost as much as they want low taxes.
So either they care about the safety of women and children, or they want to have some brown skinned and "weird" people to heave their hate on. I know which possibility I think is most likely...
I recommend this short piece, "The Missing Mood"[0]. It describes the concept that the motive and behavior of someone as it relates to a proposed set of actions is important. e.g. Someone proposing war might be correct, but one hopes a war hawk laments the need to go to war, vs. celebrating it and being bloodthirsty.
Fox News ideology may at times declare opinions that, in complete isolation, might seem reasonable. "Border control", "safe streets", "responsible government" etc. But they approach it from a place of exaggeration and lies, and an outright visceral anger and hatred toward migrants, trans people, etc. They ignore other activities that might be troublesome. Such as ignoring GOP sex offenses, GOP bribery in the oval office, unconstitutional actions by their executive, or needless wars that cost half a trillion dollars and weaken the US' national security.
So I agree with your parent comment, that Fox News and many of its viewers pick and choose what to say they're angry about, either out of intellectual dishonesty or, in the case of the viewer, outright ignorance or deeper thought about the whole picture of the government and society right now.
Taxes are good! China, which is run by some of the smartest technocrats in the world, has a very strong system for controlling the flow of foreign products into the country. Because of the nature of their government, they have more tools at their disposal than just tariffs, e.g., requiring foreign companies to establish joint-ventures with Chinese companies. But the purpose is the same.
Tariffs are a tax that buys you (at least) three things, all of which are difficult to quantify, and usually overlooked by economists:
1. Security. You make your own bullets. You're able to make and maintain your own military hardware. When another country cuts supply lines in their own self interest, you have options to advocate for yours, either through trade, making it yourself, or, yes, even force.
2. Economic opportunity for your children and grandchildren. And no, not just "factory jobs" as is commonly sneered, but a community of experience and expertise. An engineer that gets to interact with the products they design in that kind of environment is a better engineer. A country that gets to see and interact with the products it makes has a sense of pride and better social cohesion.
3. Social buy-in and consequences for companies. A Chinese car manufacturer doesn't give a shit if cutting costs killed your grandfather. A local company has to, because the executives and workers are all members of the community. I was in Germany during dieselgate, and the sense of disgust at the company was obvious. They felt that.
These things are, imo, important to the health of any country, but they can only really be valued in retrospect. So yeah, tariffs are a tax, but some things are worth paying for even if what's being purchased isn't necessarily obvious or easy to quantify.
Yes those are all good things. Tariffs aren't the only almost never the most sustainable long-term way to get them. I'm old enough to remember the protections against japanese cars, but I know they didn't solve the problems with US auto industry, for example.
It's not "proven." At the 10,000-foot view, the magical market theory folks implemented their ideas about free trade since Reagan. And who is happy with the result? Tariffs were a core policy of the United States from Alexander Hamilton through Lincoln to the early 20th century and, empirically, they worked pretty well!
Ok cool let's go back to then and cut the budget to match. Sounds like a decent tradeoff to me I guess. I would prefer a more incremental experiment though.
I'm not a free market fundamentalist. I also don't think we ever had a free market. Implementation details always matter. My standing policy is basically small informed perturbations around free trade, included targeted tariffs. Everything has tradeoffs. Restricting lumber from canada and fucking Americans? Not smart. Letting China openly steal from us? Asymmetric trade policies hurting the US? Also not smart.
Nobody likes free trade. Democrats can only get away with it because they are so much better on healthcare. They can cobble together a coalition of big businesses and service workers whose jobs can’t easily be shipped to China. But healthcare is carrying to whole weight of that compromise.
The trouble is that the US realized long ago that they could get free stuff by giving out imaginary paper (aka trade deficit) ad infinitum and, in turn, stopped doing much. China, on the other hand, doubled down on trying to do everything and now has the luxury of largely being able to ignore the rest of the world.
The US could theoretically start doing things again, but it is never clear how to make that happen. The people much prefer to get free stuff (who wouldn't!?). Even if you can convince them otherwise, a lot of the institutional knowledge required to do things is gone. As capital moves to where it is most economically useful, the 'free stuff' economic structure has shaped where the capital is found. To move to a 'do things' economy would require turning the capital allocation upside down. To have all the pieces fall into place to see all that align just right requires great upheaval.
Maybe tariffs really are trying to be the catalyst to convince the people that free stuff isn't the way to bring on the revolution, but even if that's the case, that's a different environment to how tariffs were used historically.
Tariffs are only regressive on the collection side. The redistribution side can be as progressive as you want, more than offsetting regressive collection if you wish.
I didn't say tariffs were necessarily regressive, my (poorly made) point was that renaming tariffs taxes doesn't really change the problem with them.
Edit- but I would be shocked if the net effect of Trump's tariffs weren't regressive.
Edit 2- " redistribution side can be as progressive as you want, more than offsetting regressive collection if you wish." That's an infinite money glitch if true. Tariffs increase input costs that effect many downstream things, in addition to their direct price effects.
That's like saying Clinton mind-controlled a bunch of Dukakis voters into suddenly wanting to cut the size of government. It's an underlying political realignment and reshuffling of voters.
>> Add that to the list of things I thought I'd never hear a conservative say.
Rayiner is a bad-faith troll who thinks he is being clever by doing the whole “oh, I thought you wanted to raise taxes, liberal??” thing. He does not actually think taxes are good.
I love taxes! I'm grateful as an immigrant to be able to give back to the country by paying high taxes. Here is my 7 years ago saying you should raise taxes on me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20412077
"In Sweden, about 15% of people pay the highest marginal tax rate. If that was the case in the U.S., the top tax bracket would kick in above $120,000 household income. That makes total sense. These people are very well off and should be subsidizing the rest of the country."
Nuclear stuff. btw what's more probable - every single thing that has been done under this presidency is unambiguously negative, or it's mostly negative? It's so easy to just NOT take the most extreme stance, and almost certainly to like 10 9s more accurate. Yet I'm downvoted for it.
Do people have no shame in attaching a minority group - who by the way by and away opposed Trump from a voting perspective - with ethnicity (the majority are secular) - and with a foreign government - Israel?
In any other normal sane world stuff would get called out, greyed out, and ultimately shot down. In THIS world, the responses (I bet, like this one) are the "greys."
It's a scary world we live in where the Left turns into the Right of the past.
The world should've collectively recognised what Liberation Day was and responded together, in lock step, and in kind.
Instead, the Europeans caved, Japanese caved (PM resigned after doing so), Republic of Korea caved (PM resigned after doing so), India of course caved and so on, shattering any prospect of collective action which might pull the rogue hegemon back into line.
Now, the US is simply able to renege or renegotiate the bilateral deals whenever he feels like it, forcing the other party to face down the US by themselves - not many can do this, maybe only China. Anyways, I wish the Canadians well and I hope they gain global support
That not how politics works. It is much slower and hidden process. EU fast tracked Mercosur and other trade deals. China and Japan is slowly dumping US treasury bills, Canada is in open trade confrontation and is diversifying toward China. Everybody is shifting away from US weapons suppliers. Nobody is willing to help with Iran even on symbolic level.
You are both right. The world capitulates more than it should. But the world is also moving away and building contingencies.
The world needs leadership. And Canada is helping with that.
I do not think that reciprocal tariffs are actually the answer though. They hurt both sides and the US is not a rational enough actor to respond like you hope they will. The answer is in shifting trade away from the US and isolating their economy. It takes longer but it is what will work. And even if their behaviour does not change, their power will fade with their economy.
As a Canadian, my hope is that we can build stronger relations with Europe. I don't think anyone can avoid China but I would rather minimize those ties.
We can't afford to cut all ties with United States due to our geography and history, however it would be prudent for us to reduce our dependency.
I don't think majority of Canadians wish to see the nation in such a vulnerable position again with regards to US. Banking on a single player in terms of security and trade has proven to be a risky endeavor.
I have much love for the American people, but I support the actions of our government.
As a fellow Canadian. Our neighbor is the world's biggest economy. Despite their current "challenges" they are still very close to us in values and culture. Our paths are interlocked. We are not going to decouple from the USA and it's not in our interest to do so.
When a Canadian new grad is faced with an option of going to work in SV or in China which do they prefer? Between Chinese values and American values which do we prefer? A society with no freedom of speech? Where people are arbitrarily jailed if they voice an opinion against the government? Where the government places citizens in concentration and re-education camps and runs them over with tanks? I mean to me the choice is clear.
How many large American companies have offices in Canada? How many people and what slice of the economy does this support? Lots.
So yes, the US has drifted and is drifting from the ideal. And maybe it was never the ideal. But it's much closer to us than China in every imaginable facet and will likely remain so for the next many decades. We need to filter the noise out, definitely stand firmly for what we believe in, but also compromise and look at the longer term.
Beyond that societies can change quickly. Germany, Japan, Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Peru, Chili, South Africa, every country in the USSR, and China too have changed values dramatically in short periods of time in the past 100 yrs.
Also, China is not putting out videos that say they will dominate any country in the Americas. I'd urge us to take people seriously when they say what they value:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V359k45CBY0
Between another statement you’ve made here (about how the Democratic Socialists of America want to abolish democracy) and this one, you don’t have much credibility. I am Canadian and would prefer we follow any path other than any you have espoused.
Create and serve better products more efficiently while the US insists preserving unproductive jobs and banning progress is more important than growth and affordability.
Learn from what they did well and what they did poorly, copy the good parts.
That's happening. The rest of the world is moving away from the US as a trading partner. Trump is just too flaky to deal with. Canada now exports oil to China instead of the US, for example. The EU is moving towards self-sufficiency in financial services.
What the Trump Administration does not get is that the US is no longer central to the world economy. Everyone else has a lot more productive capacity now. Trump is running on a 1980s world view.
Exactly, the move away from the US is both fast and slow. Fast on the things that could be swapped for an alternative straight away/short term. Slow in that there are something that will take decades to move away from and are actively being worked on but quietly.
This is the problem of the 2nd Trump admin, the first time was considered a fluke incident and didn't pan out so bad as there was a lot of longer term folks keeping things sort of in check. The 2nd time, it was apparent that there is a significant enough faction of the US population that will ensure this kind of power structure keeps coming back. Trump is but the first of many to operate like he does. There will be more like him.
I must warn some people, who knows which side of politics that will come from. Don't think 'your side' is above it, this kind of rhetoric and rot and creep in a lot quicker than one would think.
*Nobody is willing to help with Iran even on symbolic level*
Most people do not realize how much of a shift that is.
In the past there was always a ton of EU countries helping the US out, in whatever crap the US started. And a lot of European soldiers died. Those soldiers did not help Europe but the US, because of being allies.
Even when some European countries got called names for not helping in Iraq because they called out that the whole Weapons Of Mass destruction was a load of bull** . It did not stop others from helping the US.
Yet, now, what we see as "help" is so minimal, and even countries like Spain not just refusing but active blocking. It shows how much relationships have deteriorated.
Trump thinks of Europa like a vassal state, and every time we say no or delay, it drives him nuts. Or our best "yes", if often a "well, we need to have agreement in all the countries, see you in a few years". Do not think its coincidence, its done deliberately.
In the past when the US said something, beyond maybe France, most countries quickly followed. This is gone ... We know the world has changed, and the old order is finished.
One, US has been the largest buyer of imported goods. As much as people think turning away is difficult and needs planning.
Two, turning away requires time and planning. Supply chain isn't built in one day. People need time for that.
In the short term - like next 3-4 years - it is going to look like countries caved. But in the long term Liberation Day will be remembered as one of the days which put a nail into the American exceptionalism.
i think canada has found that its been less difficult than we thought it would be
ultimately the US is buying stuff, but its the stuff thats actually valuable and not the USD you get from it. its even easier to move when you cant even buy oil from the gulf anymore, whether in USD or otherwise.
the supply chain problem arrived in trump 1's covid disaster, and hasnt exactly been solved for getting stuff to the US again
"Now, the US is simply able to renege or renegotiate the bilateral deals whenever he feels like it, forcing the other party to face down the US by themselves"
This won't last. There are consequences for behavior on all scales. If you prove yourself untrustworthy and treacherous, people will treat you as such. International politics don't move very quickly, especially if coordination is required. But it will eventually move.
"Winning" at all costs has never ever been sustainable and I don't think see why this time will be different, especially with diminishing real power.
"They make it a desert and call it peace(winning)."
Absolutely agree; but it's never too late to react. Europe could impose tariffs on US tech or forbid it altogether to bid on government contracts. Etc.
Possibly waiting for a reasonable replacement for US tech. For example, if the US should decide to shut off MasterCard and VISA services to Europe, it would create non-trivial difficulties for the European banking system.
Now imagine the costs for the oligarchs to let that not happen. 'Might makes right' also applies internally. When the rules don't apply you will see fiefdoms eating each other and white collar crime cranked up to the max. In these dynamics there is a reason to get from your clan a tsar in power who can guarantee some level of stability. If you see a lot of sycophancy displayed around the don you know why.
the bilateral deals signed means we (the world, minus the US) is already divided. Got to scrap those deals first, which isn't going to happen. The shark has scattered the shoal and we're all going to get picked off - perpetually signing worse deals, then having to renegotiate again before signing ever worse terms.
Why does any country need a deal with the US? Canada is more integrated than anybody and they are walking away. Canada believes productive trade with the rest of the world is better than a bad deal with the US. China was prepared to do the same. The world should take notice.
Responsible governance around something like when and how to retaliate (if at all) against tariffs comes down to one of the most fundamental forces of economics and trade: real leverage. Whether or not the US should exercise its leverage to attain outsized and favorable terms on the economic stage is the peanut gallery conversation that happens on social media. The two worlds couldn't be farther apart. What will actually happen in the end is just a math equation that has never changed and will never change.
Europe has the money, the tech, the manufacturing capacity and the know-how. There is a reason Europe conquered the world in just a few years; the lady is way too good at war. One of the reasons post WOII we were quite satisfied with the idea of paying the USA with all kinds of privileges and support to their defense industry and have our own defenses knee-capped. War is horrible, we know that all too well.
Reluctantly but surely the wheel has turned now. There are still gaps for intel gathering capabilities (think AWACS), but Saab is already working on alternatives. Also, Europe has to confront its inheritance of fragmentation (in which the USA has played a big role). Just look at all the various types of fighter jets being developed independently across Europe. That is very wasteful.
Also, European armies have to incorporate the lessons from Ukraine. The Germans make the world's best tanks, but the advent of drones on the battlefield has shaken up all old mil. doctrines.
Aside 1: there are quite some areas where European weapon systems are state of the art, but you won't hear about that unless you are more in the know. The US is hurting itself here in a big way. Going alone = $$$$$$$$$$$$
Aside 2: The European Union has been conceived as an 'ever closer union' from the beginning as to lower the likelihood of new wars on the continent; something the USA pushed us to btw post-WOII. Canada and Australia have raw materials, something which Europe doesn't have abundantly. Sharing development costs across the free world is mainly why you see Canada, Japan, Australia etc having a heightened interest in Europe. There is world-wide a lot of interest in the European defense sector, but South Korea and Israel have also interesting defense sectors.
> There is world-wide a lot of interest in the European defense sector, but South Korea and Israel have also interesting defense sectors.
I think Israel has become politically just as toxic as the USA (or moreso even). It seems incredibly unwise to make your defense industry dependent on a currently openly warmongering genocidal state.
You are getting downvoted, but yes, this is something which can be observed already. The Israelian state has become a world-wide pariah state and that has repercussions for its own industry. Not in the USA, but I think this will quickly change even there. Germany is the exception here.
Sure! On the other hand, after WO II the French secured a lot of designs from Germany. The know-how, the continuous improvements, the manufacturing base is still here in Europe, this hasn't been lost. It is mostly a matter of scaling up, which is happening now.
What is different for post-war Europe is that the USA forced Europe to stop developing their own complex central pieces, making Europe fully dependent on the USA. These pieces are critical and expensive and forces/limits the design parameters of connected systems. This handicapped a lot of Europe grown hardware. These critical dependencies are getting patched away atm, but that will take time because they are complex and expensive.
Yes, and thank god we Europeans got to be born in pax americana and not before, because there were wars nearly all the time for centuries, if not millenia.
Japanese here. Caved is not an accurate expression. After intense negotiations with Trump, Lutnick, and Bessent, Minister Akazawa managed to reduced the tariff from the proposed 25% to 15%. His story of flying weekly to the States on commercial aircraft became legendary.
PM's resignation stemmed from unpopularity not due to tariff negotiation, but diminished ability to pass laws after the ruling party lost significant number of seats in elections for upper and lower houses.
As for other countries around the world, the world-wide inflation caused many ruling parties to lose support.
they carved because most of those places want access to the 'yuuuge' US market.
politics vs reality. they could correct though by selling US treasuries - but that would make the world economy sneeze which might result in pneumonia.
Everyone is banking on the current trade policy simply being temporary and whoever replaces Trump in the White House next will restore bilateral trade to normal. Why would you destroy your trade relation with the U.S. for decades to come when you can just ride out a bad deal for a few years?
Not saying I agree with it, because it sends the wrong signal, but I can understand the reasoning at least.
> Why would you destroy your trade relation with the U.S. for decades to come when you can just ride out a bad deal for a few years?
We aren't the ones who are destroying it, and we have a backbone strong enough to say this isn't good enough.
If what you say is true, then the next administration should understand how one sided the damage done to the relationship has been. No economic trade partner should have to tolerate attacks on their sovereignty and unreliable trade negotiators.
> Why would you destroy your trade relation with the U.S. for decades to come when you can just ride out a bad deal for a few years?
This was a common attitude 2017-2020, and they got disabused of that notion when Trump won in 2024. I would further argue the muted response during Trump I based on an idea that thing would "return to normal" emboldened Trump II - so that was not a winning strategy. The only country that seemed to have the correct read, and translated it into policy was China. Every other trading partner of the US seems to be floundering still.
I am not sure how much of it is that, versus a mix of tariffs being paid by the recipient rather than the vendor, versus all his unpredictable behaviour being an inherent non-tariff barrier, versus it not mattering much what a deal with the USA even looks like if we all transition to other trade partners.
The UK's Neville Chamberlain is remembered for saying of an agreement with Hitler, "peace for our time"*, and by this agreement, appeasement; less well known was that he did pursue re-armament and mutual defence agreements while attempting to deescalate.
Hopefully we won't be here in 8 years wondering how the USA got carved up into a Canadian zone, a Chinese zone, a European zone, and an Aztec zone. That last one might be from a TV show I watched as a kid.
What I fear is Trump didn't break any promise done to their electors by starting this trade wars (he did when he failed to stop actual military wars and started more instead, but that's a different point). He was elected by stating that America was the greatest country in the world and that the others were freeriding on US wealth. I'm not sure his successor can entirely overturn this policy, if a majority of the US voters believe this - also because undoing the damage would require brokering deals less favourable than before to show good faith.
I live outside of the US so I might be misintepreting the situation, but I'm unconviced that a full u-turn will happen once he's out of the office.
I agree with you partially, although there’s some irony in the sense that a lot of what Trump’s voters want on paper is closer to the Democratic Party’s policy agenda.
Look into the policies and results the Biden administration had on American manufacturing versus the contraction in American manufacturing caused by tariff implementation. Biden even invested heavily in infrastructure in red states just because it was good positive ROI policy.
Now we see Democratic Socialist politicians like Zohran Mamdani doing things like cutting permitting red tape on small businesses and it’s the exact kind of thing the Republican Party claims it stands for.
The Tax Cut and Jobs Act actually raised taxes for lower wage Americans and increased the budget deficit, the exact opposite of typical Republican talking points on those subjects.
We have to remember that in a lot of cases, policy is not the same as messaging. This is especially pertinent in personality cults. This something the US hasn’t really experienced in the US presidency in quite some time if at all, and that has made it a…unique…experience. The idea of consistent policy is currently meaningless, because it’s all about whatever is on the demagogue’s mind today.
A majority don't believe. A plurality voted for Trump in 2024 because of inflation and Biden not leaving Harris enough time to run a proper campaign. It's only the MAGA voters who don't understand how global trade is good for the US economy. But Trump's even losing some of their support with how badly the administration is running things for anyone but the very wealthy.
i dont think you can really move the blame from voters wanting trump's policies onto biden.
trump won the primary and then the election
republicans who didnt want his policies and could see that the inflation was in a large part the result of trump's handling of covid would have put somebody else up for president
Pretty revealing how you had to hand wave away the entirety of "Liberation Day" tariff policy (literally the topic of this thread) that Biden did not do in office to do the perennial low-info voter "uniparty" observation, just because of China hawkishness.
The uniparty foreign policy blob that always does identical stuff regardless of party like: signing the JCPOA with Iran / killing the JCPOA and starting War with Iran, or rejoining UNESCO and paying back due obligations / re-leaving UNESCO and WHO... etc.
His re-election suggests we need to. Even if good times return, we can now never be sure the bad are more than one election cycle away, and given the USA's bicameral government and staggered elections, that means 2 years, not 4.
They still can of course, all they need to do is collectively start selling off their US treasuries. The US is at a highly vulnerable and precarious point with their potential bond market debt spiral situation, and this is a point of leverage that can be exploited to encourage improved behavior from a bully.
This capital can then be reallocated into domestic investment to continue to decouple from the US. Very similar to how Germany learned the hard way that buying fossil gas from Russia wasn’t going to prevent aggression. Canada has started this with their recently announced energy investment plan, Europe can do this with Eurobonds.
China and Canada Energy Pact as Canada Aims to Cut Reliance on US - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46640932 - January 2026 (a component of China’s next five year plan includes LNG infra investment to support imports from Canada)
This is a classical problem. In theory it works when majority of the players work together and move in same direction, however everyone being opportunistic here makes in infeasible from long term perspective. Europe itself is in a difficult stage, its dealing with Russia on one end, has trust issues with China and now the its long term partner has gone rouge. The result of all this would be a mandate to be self sufficient aka anti-globalization
That multipolar world mandate you mentioned is already here today. That was the outcome of the actions of this US federal administration. Trust and cooperation is done for a half decade or more. The world can’t trust this administration for the remainder of the administration, and they can’t trust the US electorate to elect adults for the next administration. Countries can either accept it and take action to manage their risk (redirect investment to continue to decouple, trade deals with rational counterparties) to attempt to achieve a favorable outcome, or not and experience the potential natural consequences.
> “How can I decouple from the US as fast as possible?” is what this leads to.
> Diplomacy is the art of saying “good dog” until you make it to the rock. The US will apply pressure for short term gain against allies while they move away long term.
I think this is where Carney landed. Trust is gone. Further, the US and the world would have a precedence in dealing with Canada. Accepting a bad deal would maintain an illusion that this was good enough and to continue on in this direction. Once Trump is gone the negotiations could restart but at a much less valuable position to Canada.
Canada has had a long term investment and productivity challenge with too much focused on North and South. I suspect that this is now the catalyst for East and West investment.
I think the calculation was that no deal and the natural consequences are not that much worse than the deal on the table short term. And taking into account the future of the above it was going to be worse.
> In the final hours of negotiations, the U.S. tried to include restrictions on Canada's ability to strike trade deals with other countries, Carney said.
> "Unacceptable," the prime minister said flatly.
> Plus, the U.S. tried to restrict Canada's protections of its languages, its culture and its sovereignty, Carney added. He did not provide details of what those restrictions looked like.
Japan did start selling off US treasuries because the yen is fucked. They stopped when the US agreed to buy yen and sell euros. If China starts selling treasuries, US is fucked. But it’s in China’s interest to have this incompetent in power.
Debasing the currency is equivalent to a soft default, and would accelerate investment away from the dollar and treasuries. Mechanically, certainly, it can be done, but investors won’t do nothing while the US inflates their asset value away. They’ll take the loss (which they’d take anyway from monetizing the debt) and reallocate elsewhere.
Part of the reason Ray Dalio was on Bloomberg saying to sell bonds and buy gold or Bitcoin. Treasuries used to be where capital would “flee for safety” and that concept is breaking down.
They were not prepared and at least had to mitigate immediate harm, while preparing their economies, security, etc. to be less entangled with the US.
But once they are 'prepared' as best they can, one approach is for other countries to decide / accept that the US is mostly a lost cause while Trump or most other Republicans are in power, which will happen at times. It will affect their economies but they cannot control that. Negotiating with the US only encourages more bad behavior.
The rest of the world could then recreate (or continue) the global trading system, including the WTO, simply excluding countries that violate its rules. This puts the ball in the US's court to participate or not, never slamming the door in the US's face, always welcoming and encouraging them rhetorically, by their rules, and genuinely ('we look forward to our friends in the US joining and enjoying the benefits of doing business with the rest of the world').
In the meantime, global trade rules would be created in the interests of the other countries, without the US having a voice - a great boon after decades of US domination of such rules. This incentivizes the US to join sooner rather than later.
(It seems to me - I have no expertise in this area.)
Yes sure. Add it to the pile of contradictory goals:
1. Bring back manufacturing jobs
2. Remove trade barriers
3. Make US rich by collecting huge amount of tariffs
If 1 is true then there is no benefit for countries to remove trade barriers or pay tariffs because now there is no leverage (manufacturing jobs to protect).
If 2 is true then there is no leverage for other things to happen - countries aren't going to voluntary remove trade barriers without keeping the jobs or paying tariffs.
Unfortunately, systematically and illegally dismantling the organization responsible for protecting us against diarrhea lettuce is a setback to that goal.
It goes both ways. You can’t buy an Iberian ham that’s fully compliant with EU standards and take it back to the US because it’s not USDA certified. It’s arguably the same flavor of backdoor protectionism involved.
Not only USA products. Most countries with low safety standards and known for dangerous products are barred from trading with the EU, or at least many of their products. Recently, even big Chinese on-line shops are being targeted for selling dangerous products and lying on the description on that products.
I understand that quality and safety is a diminishing goal for the USA. But I hope that other countries keep the care for their citizens as a achievable goal.
> is not entirely incorrect
With enough re-interpretation nothing is not entirely incorrect. Agree on the part that it is misleading.
In the softwood lumber dispute that's been going on for decades, the US raised (legitimately) the point that in Canada, land is granted by permit to loggers for only nominal fees; in the U.S. loggers have to pay significant amounts for rights to log. This is effectively a gov't subsidy to Canadian loggers by comparison with American loggers, allowing Canadian loggers to sell softwoods at a lower price.
This is the difficulty with discussing "trade barriers": things that are simply handled differently in different countries can be (arguably) economic factors that discriminate against one side or the other, hence they're trade barriers. Complicating it further, one can create barriers that have plausible deniability, or point to unrelated factors and scream "TRADE BARRIER".
I know someone who was involved for a while in the softwood lumber discussions. Just an absolute snake pit trying to suss out what are real barriers, intended barriers, relevant inputs... and all of this in the context of negotiations over the same, so everything is also "does he mean this or is he distracting us from something else or just building up a talking point to surrender later?"
trade courts did not find the US complaints legitimate, and repeatedly rule in canada's favour. the end root of the difference in cost is that canada is really big with a lot of forest and doesnt have better things to do with forested land.
the logs in canada are just worth less than the ones in the US. Differential advantage is a real thing that exists.
If the US government really beleives it to be a canadian government subsidy to loggers, it should be more than happy to give the tariff money to the canadian government, making canada's taxes and fees exactly what the US thinks they should be.
Agreed, but my point was that these things are hideously complicated and there's an endless source of details to hold up and say "NOT FAIR!" and it's ultimately about finding an agreement, not about the course of natural justice.
BTW, I'm Canadian. IIRC, the trade courts didn't find that the complaint about fees wasn't legitimate, it was that American logging companies had other, offsetting economic benefits, so the bottom line was that they weren't disadvantaged. So the U.S. simply refused to abide by the ruling and didn't pay the fine it was supposed to, so that receiving the fine or some portion thereof, became another thing to negotiate in the next round. Unbelievably hairy stuff.
Unless you can explain why the American stumpage fees are inherently "correct", this is simply a case of one country having a bigger supply of something and therefore being able to offer it much cheaper. You know... Capitalism working exactly as intended.
Isn't that kind of America's thing?
"No, not like that!"
All the rest of this is designed to distract from the real issue: Americans love Capitalism, except in the rare cases where they don't come out on top. Then everyone else is being mean and unfair.
It's funny. When European governments charge high fees, Americans deride them as socialist and anti-capitalist. When the American government does it (as it does here)? Why, it's the natural order of things! Our fees are the "correct" fees. It's everyone else that's wrong!
This is also a problem for trade between EU member states.
There's other examples of course, e.g. the Cybertruck is not road legal in the EU. Though I can hardly say that's "in the room" given how unpopular the vehicle is even in the USA.
Unfair? I didn't say unfair, I said it was "in the room" with us. Most NTBs aren't unfair, but also most don't fit in a room and unlike language are abstract in ways most people don't engage with.
The local jobs market is currently demanding a lot of C1 German. This does not seem unfair to me. Does make it challenging to sell services to Germany if you can't provide it at that level.
Or, to put it another way, imagine my response had been:
Hör mal, Kumpel, wenn du glaubst, du kannst deine Dienstleistungen in einem Land verkaufen, dessen Landessprache du nicht sprichst, dann glaub mir als jemandem, der es gerade versucht: Das ist verdammt schwer.
You can only get so far with Google Translate in a business setting; I know, 'cause that's where I started, and it took me a long time to work up to "eh, you'll do".
The U.S. also has a huge amount of trade barriers that are indirect against the rest of the world. Don't act like the U.S. is the victim here.
One example: In Canada, there's a vibrant french language film industry, meaning films in french that originate and are made in Canada and then marketed abroad. The english language equivalent is anemic because decades ago, as part of trade negotiations, the Canadian gov't gutted subsidies for english language film production as a trade barrier against Hollywood.
This was totally the right move, if for no other reason than it's the only thing that this US admin will respect in the long run.
Being in Canada though this does look v. short sighted of the US. All this is going to achieve is pushing Canada much closer to other countries, particularly China, which at least superficially these negotiations were meant to prevent.
Trump and MAGA have destroyed the good relationships and trust that the US had built throughout the world. Canada's Prime Minister wrote [1]:
"We have recognised from the beginning that America has changed, and that we will not return to our old relationship. Our government understood, before many, that America is altering all its trade relationships. Putting tariffs on its closest allies and charging for access to its vast market."
The US admin is basically Trump. Saying Trump will respect Canadian strength shows you are making the same mistake other people keep making in thinking Trump is somehow like them or is consistent enough to predict. I don't think Trump is a rational actor. He is a collection of ephemeral positions lacking coherence accumulated from random sources.
> All this is going to achieve is pushing Canada much closer to other countries
The world is watching this story just like the world watched Davos.
Last night will encourage further decoupling of the US for nations other than Canada.
idk if Trump 2028 will happen or not. I will say with conviction no matter who is in office by then will not rebuild trust around the world in their tenure. Too much damage is done to the US's reputation.
> I will say with conviction no matter who is in office by then will not rebuild trust around the world in their tenure. Too much damage is done to the US's reputation.
The only way that the US can start rebuilding this trust is that the incoming Democratic President and Congress (assuming we are so lucky) immediately starts by prosecuting Trump and his family (and results in actual jail time, not just fines or small stays), zero out their government contracts, fire most of the people installed in government since 2025, expand the Supreme Court, and remove the fillibuster. I know people think ideas like that are extreme, but really, what else is going to convince the rest of the world that the US has cleaned up their act? It has to start at home first.
That still will not convince anyone to trust the US. At any moment a new US president and congress can come in and do the same thing.
a de-nazification program similar to germany post-WW2, combined with a shredding and full rewrite of the US Constitution by western allies to bring it in line with estonia's as an example, in addition to clearing house with the Trumps is the kinda thing that would start building trust
I think the above person is correct, and you are on the right track.
I'm not hopeful for a full Constitutional Convention, but every possible effort by any means must be made to put into law every "unwritten norm" that the Trump administration took advantage of.
Impeachment is the mechanism to remove a rogue president, and the entire GOP is party to a "soft coup" against the Constitution of the United States. I agree it will take a complete societal rejection of MAGA and the Unitary Executive theory for allies to ever trust the US again.
There is absolutely nothing that will end American democracy faster than jailing Trump. The moment it becomes clear that the cost of losing is personal jail time for you and your family, every politician in the game has to start playing for blood, and everyone with power has to chose rubicon or jail.
If Trump goes to prison, that’s when I leave, because that will be the moment historians point to as “no going back”.
My point isn’t “president should be above law”. My point is that, if Trump and admin go to prison on charges that are not so strong that it sways a large portion of the public and republicans, we’re fucked. Regardless of the underlying truth of the case, regardless of what I think is just or unjust, we’re fucked. Because unless it’s convincing enough that republicans also agree, then it’s death spiral.
So I’m hoping the justice department either doesn’t have enough of a case to convict, or has enough of a case that the whole country falls in line. The in between, it’s time to get out. Because shit will go downhill very fast.
> The moment it becomes clear that the cost of losing is personal jail time for you and your family
That has always been clear, seeing how it is the default mode of operation for empires throughout history. The solution here is separation of powers: the ruler itself is bound by rules and institutions that provide a check on their power, and in turn those institutions protect the ruler after stepping down.
It is Trump and the Republican party that chose to abandon that solution. There already is no going back from that choice.
The United States isn't a monarchy, we fought a whole war to establish that. Our leaders aren't meant to be above the law. If our "democracy" can't survive putting even a President in jail for their crimes than it doesn't deserve to survive.
And I reject your premise that putting one's leaders in jail will only lead to an infinite spiral of partisan kangaroo courts because other democracies manage to hold their leaders to legal account without going into a death spiral.
And it's honestly weird and more than a bit disturbing how controversial that simple concept has become. I guess we really do want kings here.
He’s seen by at least 50% of the population as completely valid. Any jail time, unless he does something egregious enough that even republicans support it, will be seen as political targeting and “sending a message” by at least 50% of the electorate. And guess what republicans will say? “Once we get in power, we’re throwing all democrats involved with his jailing into prison”, and the cycle will escalate.
“than it doesn't deserve to survive”. There it is, out loud. If you only support democracy when your side wins then you are just an authoritarian who wants democratic cover. You’re just as bad as Trump.
> He’s seen by at least 50% of the population as completely valid.
This is laughable.
He never hit 50% in the popular vote, and that doesn’t count the ‘none of the above/don’t care’ non-voters. That was at the peak of the oligarch-funded campaign that saw record-smashing spending and advertising to gin up support.
His popularity immediately fell after the election and has been sliding the entire time he’s been in office. A majority of voters supported his impeachment shortly after he started the Iran war in back April and he’s even more unpopular now.
Unless Trump does something egregious enough in the coming years that the case against him is rock solid, black and white, and heavy, any move to jail him and those around him is impossible to distinguish from political targeting. I have not seen evidence of something out of line enough, no matter what Reddit hive mind thinks.
So with the knowledge I have, I’d say any serious push to jail him and his team would be terrifying. If we get crystal evidence of bribery that holds up in court and is clear enough to sway a large swath of Republicans, then that’s great. Still a worse outcome than there not being something black and white to nail him with, but I think that case democracy survives. But not “trumped up” charges.
It’s a good thing that they’ve committed many blatant and easily provable criminal acts then. The type you spend the rest of your life in prison for, if you’re not being protected by captured systems. Market manipulation, insider trading, embezzlement are all happening obviously and publicly, just to start. Bribery and corruption at many levels, illegal use of things like ICE, illegal detention, ignoring and abusing courts and the judicial system, whatever the hell they’re doing with crypto, the list is basically whatever crime you can think of.
I understand you, and that it will mean republicans and their base won’t be swayed, which will create huge problems. But we’re well past the point that anything would ever sway them. There’s no easy way out now, the choice is being increasingly abused by them forever or taking the hits now to stop it. Pulling punches now will only ensure that it comes back 10x worse later.
If I had to guess at anything it would be bribery, market manipulation, and crypto related business. The others I just don’t see even making it through, there is way too much room for interpretation of powers.
“Pulling punches now will only ensure that it comes back 10x worse later” and using punches will what, subdue? This is half the political power of America you’re talking about punching. Republicans will what, roll over? You think democrats win handily enough to end it?
It escalates the blood feud. The way out of a blood feud is de-escalation, amnesty, forgiveness, working together. Not demanding more blood, even if you think it is perfectly justified.
His approval rating is somewhere between 30%-35% depending on the poll. So no it's not 50%.
> You’re just as bad as Trump.
No, Trump's 2nd term is in the running for most corrupt administration in American history. Even what Nixon did would just be another scandal for this administration that would leave the news cycle in a couple weeks.
He, or at least his officials and family need to be held accountable. That is the right, just and Constitutional thing to do.
But... that's still perfectly legal, isn't it? All of these little backdoors the founding fathers added to the executive as some vestigial organ of monarchical
power just because they couldn't trust the people in "we the people" maybe should be reconsidered. If we don't want presidents to be able to pardon themselves and anyone else without limit, there are ways to make that happen. Never even bothering to convict any president of a crime doesn't even attempt to fix that problem however.
and do other countries really put their criminal official in jail? do they establish any kind of restitution to the victims?
can you really point to a single government where they dont illegally communicate outside of logged channels, or any such things, to scam the voters? or where they intentionally promise something they have zero intention of keeping, or lying about whether its possible. and of course some such things are not considered crimes because the very people who would then be violating the law would be the ones who MAKE the law.
the vast majority of politicians worldwide are super criminals doing things that if you or I did even 1/100 what they did, they would lock us up and throw away the keys.
The problem is they're also stifling trade with China. We still have quotas on Chinese cars so that they don't flood the market with affordable cars to preserve our (yours and ours) inferior car industry.
It's basically what Canada is doing to the US with dairy, except with Chinese cars.
What is going to happen is this lack of deal will accelerate the (inevitable) decline of the Canadian car industry, which will reduce objections to the Chinese imports leading to those quotas changing in an ever accelerating feedback loop.
From the US strategic perspective this is moving out of the frying pan and into the fire.
I don't understand this and would like a clarification.
There are zero Canadian automobile assemblers; they are Canadian subsidiaries of American companies, with some parts manufacturers being here.
Assuming American companies (and companies from subordinates like Japan) leave, what would be the problem in having a similar relationship with China? Is it because their manufacturing is more integrated?
The American, and other auto makers, only manufacturers in Canada because the Canadian and American auto markets have been integrated for over 80 years. Removing Canada's access to the American market basically makes Canadian auto manufacturing uncompetitive since Canada isn't a big enough market to sustain a domestic auto market.
I'm in the EU and my masters did hand over the car market to chinese cars and this was a very stupid move.
Some EU carmakers are fighting back but it's very hard when politicians managed to have energy price in the EU being about 7x higher than those carmakers in China do pay.
I'm not for tariffs but China is dumping and if we don't all want to end up being vassals of China, we should at least protect some of our industries.
And as "good" as chinese EVs are, I'm sorry but they're not anywhere near the quality of, say, what German cars used to be.
If western carmakers had been given a reasonable timeline to switch to EVs and reasonable energy price, the situation would be different.
EU carmakers may be saved by people preferring to buy cars from their own continent but that remains to be seen. The latest BMW EVs, for example (once you remove the spying / remote control issues: but that affects chinese EVs doubly so), are apparently very fine machines.
There is a huge difference between breaking partnerships by fast uni-directional policies vs. slow uni-directional or bi-directional policies.
EU and even USA should start doing something reasonable. Like introducing quota on how much overall can be imported/exported to protect local markets. Like lets say 40%.
Everyone gets a piece of cake.
But lets be honest, germany (my country) also never played fair. We gained quite a lot of export strength through the Euro and overall german politics.
And its not just the energy prices, it was quite clear what the energy prices going to be but no one really invested into reducing them early or fast enough at all. No one cared. BMW new factory in hungarie though does has a lot more reneablw and was able to continue production despite hungaries energy issue.
In China a person makes 500-1000 per month, in germany the same person makes a lot more.
China you have raw resources and cheap labor and cheap energy on EVERY SINGLE point of the process. From iron ore to the assembly itself.
And it doesn't matter much anyway because with the current and future grade of automatisation, a lot less money is getting directly to the people.
We need laws enforcing the rich to pay the taxes and/or invest A LOT more a lot faster and a lot broader.
We need real politics and not this garbage happening in germany or in the USA or in Russia.
China invested in producing cheap energy. Most of the rest of the world did not.
At root, economics is about turning energy into goods and services. If the root industrial input of your competitor is cheaper than the cost of that same root industrial input to you, you're gonna need some incredible efficiencies elsewhere in that production pipeline to pull even.
At this point, the EU should be all about keeping the other major powers at arm's length, (economically and militarily), while pursuing renewable electrification with all deliberate speed.
That should be everyone else' strategy going forward as well by the way. Without cheap energy in the next global economic phase, your nation or bloc is dead in the water.
I have close the zero faith that the EU would be able to make the cultural changes necessary to move to self dependance.
Especially with being well behind in the current AI arms race. You need the opposite of a "workers utopia" to do all the things the EU needs to do, and do them fast.
They either stay with the US or become a vassal of Xi Jinpeng.
you dont really need to get involved in the ai arms race though. a late comer will still benefit from better designed at higher volume lower energy chips, and good enough open weight models.
Did the parent say clean energy or cheap energy? Obviously yes, coal.
Though coal has dropped as a percentage of their portfolio fairly dramatically, and in absolute twh has been stable since 2010, with other energy sources growing.
These two things (investment in green energy and coal) can be true at the same time.
China dominates global clean energy investment, accounting for more than half of the $1.1 trillion invested worldwide between 2019 and 2025, while the United States contributed approximately $236 billion, representing less than a quarter of the total. - https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/energy/articles/china-spen...
Ask why does China have cheap energy. Indeed, why was China able to save Trumps ass by halving its oil imports and preventing a catastrophic meltdown of oil-driven economies?
For example, the first tariff wave was a huge transfer of wealth from citizens to corporations in the OBBBA. First, the income from tariffs was projected to offset the tax cuts for the rich and corporations. Then, when the Supreme Court found them unlawful, the money had to be returned. But first the corporations let consumers pay the tariffs by increasing product prices, but now it is the same companies who get the tariff refunds. And since they are obviously not going to give the money back to the customer, it lined their pockets.
They stand for Project 2025 and the Maralago Accord, and the ideology behind them. So far they followed both projects quite closely. Trump is a tool they have to manage to reach their goals
Also, of course, extracting as much money from the state as possible
Those people always assume like the US can do stuff in a vacuum. And they always underestimate how smart other economies will respond to the chaos. Most big economies are in a better position than the USA.
> This was totally the right move, if for no other reason than it's the only thing that this US admin will respect in the long run.
Unfortunately, Canada (where I live) will feel way more pain from this than the US. I am not sure Trump will have respect for this at all, but the alternative was to put in a permanent trade deal that significant disadvantaged Canada.
I know that this is insanely complex with everybody protecting their own economies, but I think this is where middle powers working together more strongly could help. Imagine that Canada, the EU, and Britain worked together as an economic NATO, where a tariff attack on one is a tariff attack on all. It would hurt the US much more to bully one of these economies.
Canada and the EU already have a trade agreement since 2016. The UK economy is about 1/5th that of the EU, not enough to move the dial, and they kind of went off in the opposite direction around that same time...
You'd need n^2 "NATO"'s then, because EU has implemented many really shitty policies too and someone would want to fight back against that too. UK may do the same.
And we already have an actual NATO example, where one member attacks countries around the world, one of those countries fights back, threathening to attack american bases even in europe if needed... and now other nato members might get involved in a war that was started by one of it's own members, that no one else really wanted, and side on the side of the agressor ( https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/nato-chief-reaffirms-allianc... ). To turn back into economics, what happens when EU declares an "economic war" against china, china retalites (by eg. banning exports of something we really need)... does canada go along and threathen it's own economy? Or do they form a new "NATO" with "everyone-else except EU"?
There is also the factor that Canada has been propping up unsustainable dead end industries on a massive scale for years, and that this will make any pain from such a situation, deal or no deal, that much worse.
Most obviously Southern Ontario is living in a dreamland where inexplicably ICE autos remain a viable industry ad infinitum.
Some forced reality, by any means, will in the long run prove to be welcome.
That will continue with only cars made in Canada not having Canadian tariffs. You make 100,000 cars in Canada everything above that amount is subject to tariffs.
The last ~60 years have been a process by which the North American auto industry has been so heavily integrated that there is no such thing as a car made entirely in one country or another, especially in the Detroit–Windsor corridor.
Canada has manufacturers that the US doesn't (and won't for at least 5 years) and vice-versa.
Autos are more obvious than the dairy industry, even though Trump claimed a couple of days ago that the reason there was an imminent deal is because Canada allegedly agreed to eliminate dairy tariffs? Trade negotiations have stalled almost certainly because Canada isn't actually willing to give up dairy tariffs.
Besides dairy, one of the last major quota based protected industries in Canada was the taxi industry. It's interesting to compare and contrast the two. It used to be that if you could put together enough of a down payment to get a loan to pay $1M for a taxi license or for a quota allocation for 20 cows you'd be set for life, as long as you were willing to put in long hours. We had no qualms throwing the taxi drivers under the bus, but are willing to go to the mat for those dairy producers. Is it because taxi drivers were mostly brown skinned?
Which is why Canadians wanting a protected monopoly is especially interesting. Usually when something is considered important we want everyone to have access to it, not only the handful of elites who get legal control over it all.
I suppose that explains why Canadian's won't allow the staple foods to also be supply managed, only accepting it for luxury foods (and once tobacco) that wouldn't cause a crisis if they disappeared.
The dairy cartel is very strong in Canada (similar to the maple syrup one). They are deeply embedded in the government.
It'd be like trying to convince the US to reduce their Corn cartel. Except the corn industry keeps prices low, paid for by the American tax payer and demand mandates, and the Dairy cartel keeps prices high so consumers pay for the lack of competition.
The Quebec PM did say that if the dairy industry wasn't happy they wouldn't put US alcohol badk on the shelves, which would have effectively killed the whole thing.
While a factor I doubt this is the whole story though.
> While a factor I doubt this is the whole story though.
No story can be told in a HN comment. No story can be fully told in words.
However, having spent much of my existence around the Canadian diary industry it is clear that it has always been the biggest sticking point in US and Canada relations. Not just today, but that's been the case for my entire life.
Is anyone else getting that feeling about hearing the world "deal" so much that it's losing any meaning whatsoever?
What exactly does this word mean? It definitely doesn't mean a stable set of agreements that can be relied upon to ensure a stable future business environment. That's not in the cards.
What I suspect Carney is doing, and fully support as a Canadian, is running down the clock. An agreement is America isn't worth anything without leverage to back it. The main goal is to stall to delay the damage as much as possible while diversifying away our economic dependence on the US. There is no other long-term goal - everything else is just appearances and showmanship.
I'm sure many Canadians are fine with a "bad no deal" if it means not negotiating with an unreliable partner that consistently engages in threatening Canada's national sovereignty.
Trump’s deals also are of indefinite terms. Ask the Saudis - their big nuclear deal fell apart within a day as Trump added new conditions out of thin air.
I think you're right that this will be more painful for Canada, economically, but I'm not so sure about "way more". But politically, it will be much more painful for the US side of the negotiation than for the Canadian side. The Carney administration is on much firmer political ground than the Trump administration. Time is on Carney's side.
>The Carney administration is on much firmer political ground
I don't think so. Time really isn't on Carney's side either.
Carney's new tariffs fall on those who, in aggregate, did not vote for him. The average Carney voter has been very vocal about wanting to pursue this tactic- that's why they elected him. (That average voter is an Eastern retiree whose holdings are generally in real estate, so they don't care about any other economic sector beyond that which keeps their property values high, especially compared to the feel-good Elbows Up stuff.)
But Carney's currently having trouble just keeping the country together at this point. That's why he's approving projects he really doesn't want to approve out West, like those oil pipelines, because the West has credibly signaled that that they might just ban Carney and his Eastern voting block from making law and collecting tax from them if development of their part of the country is hindered any further. But if it's not hindered, they'll grow in political power, which is also an inherent threat to Ottawa's power (just not immediately).
And yet here Carney is- for the second time now- imposing more economic roadblocks that drive up consumer prices and put more people out of work for no reason other than his voting block wanting it that way. "Just retaliate" might be the least bad option for Carney to pander to that voting block, but every concession to them drives the country closer to separation, and that has time pressure too.
I think you're mistaken about the effect that the Albertan premier's artificially manufactured "independence" campaign is having on the electorate.
Outside of the small fringe communities that support it, the reaction of the broader country has been to actually shift MORE into hardline stances against the US, as the effort is seen largely as an American manufactured thing.
Additionally, I'd advise to take with caution perspectives from any sources that would characterize the province of Alberta as "the west".
Not really, though. Despite what even a good chunk of Canadians (or yourself) might think, the country doesn't end at Toronto.
If the government wasn't worried about the effects, they wouldn't be in any hurry to approve the infrastructure projects; they've been in the works for a very long time, stalled out. Urban Easterners claim to believe the planet will explode if they're built, and the governments they elect act accordingly, but it's really just a power thing.
Additionally, I'd advise you to not think you know better than the people that actually live here.
This sort of rhetoric leads me to believe you've been enmeshed in the online and more um.. "engaging", rhetoric on this which no doubt paints a very compelling narrative.
The government's actions are much better explained by a sudden actual, panicked focus on actual development of the economy towards some combination of diversification and domestic demand - after the governing party's leader was replaced by arguably a much more results oriented PM after having been governed for a while by a much more vibes oriented PM.
Opening up the pipeline projects required more than just "conceding" to Alberta, it required negotiating with BC and the native tribes that would have a say in the path and ensuring they got the concessions they needed. Boring work. Not really meme material and doesn't make the headlines.
Between all the things the government has been doing - the oil sector work, the acceleration of military procurement, the various bilateral trade agreements, and work on easing internal trade restrictions, acceleration of internal projects - it's easy for some interest or another to cherry pick a particular set of events and use them to paint a narrative.
These narratives would be more compelling and maybe work better at other times, but the issue currently is that the American president is just so effective at drowning out any of these. There's nothing quite so unifying as an obnoxious tyrant rambling on about your country in disrespectful terms.
The commentary (mistakenly) assuming my nationality could probably have been left out of your response :)
To me, it seems like you have a myopic view of the situation that is overweighting the importance of a political movement that has high salience for you, but fairly low salience for most of the electorate.
It's all relative. I'm sure you're right that Carney will lose some support because of this, but he'll also gain and solidify some other support. And he has lots of room to give. We haven't had leadership in the US as popular as the current Canadian leadership for over 15 years. Whereas the Trump administration's approval is so low that the only question is whether there is even any room lower to go.
> Unfortunately, Canada (where I live) will feel way more pain from this than the US. I am not sure Trump will have respect for this at all, but the alternative was to put in a permanent trade deal that significant disadvantaged Canada.
It's unfortunate and in some ways unfair. I hope the Canadian economy will move towards more open trade partners and will proposer.
The thing that I really struggle to understand is what the grand vision behind this is. A logical consequence of the tariffs is that Canada, Europe and other American allies focus more on those who are willing to trade with them, including China.
If I put a 2/3y contract in place with an American supplier, there's a fair chance that I might have to deal with 10-50% tariffs at some point during the contract. This does make (long)-term business deals with the US risky.
There is no grand vision. Trump has an irrational love of tariffs. He just likes them, they feel right to him. It is entirely that we have a presidential system with an executive that is capable of too much unilateral action, and we elected someone to that office who is unfit for it.
Does the admin’s affinity for tariffs have anything to do with Lutnick? His “former” firm bought tariff credits from companies for pennies on the dollar - huge upside if you knew what was coming.
I do think that Trump is irrationally attached to protectionism, but I also think that tariffs have at least 2 concrete benefits for him: 1) as a tool of economic coercion to achieve geopolitical ends, and 2) as a form of corruption to solicit de facto bribes in exchange for exemptions.
When you are forbidden to expand taxation on the people with money, because "ideology" and your country is accruing debt at historic levels, tariffs are about the only revenue source that you have that won't make the oligarchs angry.
> The thing that I really struggle to understand is what the grand vision behind this is.
Religious zealots and the new barons want to go back to the Gilded age. If that means the house needs to burn down first, the house will burn down first. In the mean time, there is lots to gain from crises.
This is something so far removed from the way normal, constructive way people (have to) think and behave with each other as a prereq to participate in society that they will inevitably fail to see this parasitical dynamic, because there is no way they can relate to that from their own frames. Even when we learn about this we will instinctively dismiss it. It doesn't fit our frame of reference, so we decide this can't be true.
Perhaps, but Canada will emerge stronger. The US doing to flip Congress by a margin of 2 and just lock in Trump insanity until something really bad pops.
Putin wanted Trump to decapitate the Iranian regime?
Let's be serious, that has nothing to do with the Canadian situation, which has more than enough going on without needing to imagine things.
Edit to add: the extent to which many of you will apparently blame anything and everything on Putin is extraordinary. Just because the sun shines on Putin as well does not mean he made it do so.
sure, but ukraine is not able to stop its own export infrastructure from being blown up, or defend itself from north korean missiles anymore.
europe and east asia whove been helping to fund and arm ukraine are also taking the real pressure from iran and the US halting energy exports from the gulf.
the oil price for high enough to where russia gets paid the same amount despite having most of its infrastructure blown up, vs having its infrastructure blown up and also the oil proce being low.
Yes, it has that effect. It is just IMO unlikely that this was planned and steered by Putin. If he was that smart he either would not have started the war with Ukraine or would have won the war with Ukraine.
The war with Ukraine is currently doing huge damage to Russia. Maybe Putin wants to be more securely in charge of a diminished Russia. IMO again, I doubt that.
Please read the discussion before you comment. Infrastructure damage is because of Ukraine's actions, not because of trump. We were discussing trump's actions benefiting Russia. Not saying it's on purpose, probably incompetence.
The discussion is if Trump is Putins puppet or not. Seems like you agree with
fidotron that is is just incompetence, so you should not have argued against him.
Yes? The US is currently running out of oil. The strategic reserve has been drawn so low it is in danger of failing. The US economy is being propped up by an AI bubble, and the folks currently in charge of Iran are even more tied to Russia than the previous regime. And oh, by the way, when the US can’t draw down from the reserve any longer they’ll be forced to ease sanctions on Russian oil.
We have fewer weapons to sell to Ukraine since we have expended a huge amount and are pulling a carrier out of Asia due to the debacle. I'm pretty sure Putin/Xi are happy to see us enter yet another Middle East quagmire.
> Putin wanted Trump to decapitate the Iranian regime?
This is impractical. There is a hierarchy of thousands of Mullahs that ascend when you kill off one. There is no "head". It's a distributed hierarchy or hydra, rather than an effective dictatorship. ofc, Trump wanted to appease Bibi and Trump fired most of the advisors who object to his bad ideas, so it was a perfect storm for a global quagmire.
I don't think you need to be so specific about it. It's more about the overall goal: weakening the United States as much as possible. And if that means embroiling them in a pointless war and wearing down their stockpiles... Well, you can see how that would be advantageous.
Biden gets Russia and Ukraine stuck in a quagmire in Ukraine, so Putin retaliates by getting the U.S. and Iran stuck in a quagmire in the Middle East. Wars are won by the countries that stay out of them. The Russia-Afghanistan war played a very significant role in the downfall of the Soviet Union.
The irony is that China is the big winner from all of this, simply by staying above the fray and making trade deals with all the countries that more bellicose superpowers start fighting. When your adversary is making a mistake, let him.
His strategy was to give Ukraine just enough weapons to prevent annihilation without giving them so many weapons that would allow them to win. Hence, quagmire. The weapon sales also came with conditions like not allowing them to strike deep within Russia itself, all of which prolongs the war without leading to a clear victor.
But Russia and Putin can end the war at their earliest convenience. Your perspective discounts the agency of the aggressor, places all agency in weaponry (as opposed to the will of the defenders) and doesn't acknowledge that the Biden approach offered a continuous off-ramp that should have been taken. I'm not sure how allowing Russia to not suffer defeat means that they must continue their barbaric war against Ukraine.
The Iran war is good for Russia. Regime "decapitation" does not harm Russia, oil going up is good for then. America being weakened and stuck there is good for then too.
Putin wanted the US military presence in the middle east to be severely crippled, which it is now.
He would also want the munitions stockpile to be depleted, which it is now.
Though I do agree, not literally every move Trump does is on a string from Putin and the Iran war isn't one; it sure still is mighty convenient all the same to make the US military look weak and incompetent.
They could be both pulling at the strings, often in different directions with varying success. It could even be tracked by the people going in and out of favor with the admin: MTG, Carlson, Gubbard riding high? Russia's pull is stronger. Them becoming pariahs reduced to criticizing the Iran war from the peanut gallery? Israel has taken over.
My actual argument is that the theory that he's a puppet being pulled is not a serious one. Much like a chocolate for hunger, it's just an intellectually lazy explanation for people who look for intellectually lazy explanations.
Would Putin want Germany to cancel the shut down of its nuclear power plants as Trump urged it to. [1]
The Green Movement in Europe, which Trump opposes, was best thing to happen to Putin.
As far as I can see, where Trump goes wrong is the same place the social democrats go wrong: believing in economic fallacies. In Trump's case that would be the belief that tariffs are beneficial.
He also on rare occasion aligns with very socialist leaning politicians like Elizabeth Warren, like when he sought to prevent private equity from buying up housing — which totally misdiagnoses the cause of the housing shortage. But it's these economic fallacies that makes Trump popular for the same reason social democrats are popular. The vast majority of people don't understand economics.
This is the way. If the US imposes tariffs, impose tariffs on US goods.
The US administration twists facts to suit their agenda. For example, they often complain about the trade deficit the US has with other countries. However, that deficit often (depends on the country) only exists if you exclude digital goods (Microsoft, Google, Apple, etc.).
If the rest of the world were to restrict the import of those digital goods, in the interest of fairness, the tech lobbyists would swarm D.C. in panic.
Europe/Canada should ban chatgpt/anthropic and say "ok we will use chinese models for our vibe coding I guess" and watch the stock market implode overnight. Remenber when they tried to ban non-US citizens from using Fable? best to remove that sword of damocles now regardless
Good luck with the Chinese models I’d say. Next they’ll be using Russian ones just because they hate Trump so much haha.
It feels good to say things like the EU and Canada should just ban whatever, but the US can just ban imports of critical goods from Europe too and harm European industries (I’m not in favor of this but it’s certainly an option).
So if the EU can cozy up to China, well we can drop the whole Taiwan issue and cozy up to China too. If Europeans don’t care about democracy in Taiwan maybe we shouldn’t either. Oh and by the way, China is helping Russia prosecute its war against Ukraine (just like Iran and North Korea) but I guess Trump sent some mean tweets so NATO is over, all the alliances are over, the EU and Canada will cozy up to China, and ban all American products. Things that can be easily discarded by both sides aren’t worth much.
the advantage US labs have is that we use them. If chinese labs got 1 years worth of usage from everyone else as their daily driver, they would catchup if not overtake the US based firms - assuming you even think that they're truly behind anyway.
Ok. Don’t use them and then we’ll just leverage China’s models too. What’s the problem? Why does the US need to lead in AI if Europe (and everyone else) prefers to partner with China? We can just partner with them too. They can have Taiwan. We can pull out of NATO and bring our troops home from overseas bases around the world. It’ll save us a lot of military spend and then we don’t have to play these games anymore.
Besides we can just distill Chinese modules and release open weights like they do now.
I mean this would be great haha, America voluntarily ceding its position as the supreme global power without bloodshed. Its the best we could hope for. Now watch the US show that this is the one course they will never take.
Well it's unlikely we'd voluntarily cede it, but in the event that we do so, Russia dominates Europe, Iran dominates the Middle East, and China takes over Taiwan and shares dominance with the US in the Pacific.
Of course the US not going to war over these areas may not shed American lives, but I think it would be immature to suggest that European, Saudi, Taiwanese, or other blood wouldn't be spilt in war. For example as we cede our supreme global power without bloodshed, as you prefer, we would obviously withdraw from NATO and move all US forces from Europe (except maybe the UK) and so Russia would then mobilize forces, attack the Baltics, and so forth. But I guess if that's the best you'd hope for that's on you - I'm surprised you are aligned so closely with MAGA foreign policy but you find all sorts of viewpoints on the internet.
By the way, isn't Germany losing 10,000 manufacturing jobs per month? I hope Europeans enjoy further ceding economic power to them and losing industrial capacity.
I'd generally rather be number 1, but hey being number 2 with roughly the same standard of living, a lot less expenses and criticism, and less hatred seems OK to me.
Russia dominates "Europe"; what, that Russia who can't even beat Ukraine? That can't even make ball bearings anymore? That has to pull North Korean troops in? We're fucking terrified man.
I think Poland alone could defeat Russia, if it even still exists in the current form in a few years -- add the finances of France and Germany and it's even more one sided.
Im anti MAGA because it was obvious from the beginning it was a pack of lies. He ran on "no news wars" and then started one. Ad nauseum. There no point debating policy with the Mafia who are taking over your block. If it were about policy, yes I do think Im actually pretty aligned with what average Anerican voters want.
The important thing when dealing with Americans is to pay no attention to what they say as that is all "PR", you only need to observe what they do. Most Americans dont know this even about themselves, which is why they end up with a guy like Donald Trump
8note since I cant reply to you directly as the thread is too long - ok, maybe I should have used "release the Epstein files" or "bring down the national debt"
Why is this ironic? I see this point a lot but don’t understand the underlying reasoning for why it is a meaningful rebuttal?
It’s insane that the US administration (said as an American) doesn’t continue to treasure a values-aligned, peaceful, stable, independent neighbor along a massive unprotected border.
But I don’t understand this energy carve-out argument.
Expectation is that Canada should have a balanced trade with the USA. The reality is that Canada will always have a trade deficit because of oil exports to the USA, especially now when the USA needs it the most.
There’s not a lot of irony in trade politics, but more ignorance. It’s perfectly fine to have a trade deficit with individual countries. The layman’s example is that most of us have a trade surplus with our employers, and deficits with retail outlets. It all balances out.
The US trade deficit is mostly balanced out by service (often not counted) and investment flows. The US could theoretically end most of its trade deficits if it balanced its budget, thus reducing demand for treasuries. However, that would come with other pitfalls. It would either entail tax increases, spending cuts, or both at the government level and it would then bleed into the standard of living of most Americans as foreign investment slowed down.
It doesn’t surprise me at all to see yields go up as foreigners invest less into the US as they get dinged sending goods here. So maybe that’s ironic…
Agreeing with your larger point but on the other hand, Trump-voting districts with older industries probably have trade deficits, both with other American districts and especially internationally.
We are leaving the time when trust allowed trade agreements that went beyond the maximum minimum with the US. Trust allowed countries to make agreements with the US that had obvious potentials for exploitation, but overall they were followed to the greater benefit of both. Trust enabled that. Now the US has decided to break trust and countries know it. That lost premium means a major loss in value to both sides but ultimately the US will be the biggest looser because the other algorithm here is tit for tat. In a world economy, countries that cooperate will thrive and those that exploit will fail. We are seeing completely uneducated, emotion driven, economic policy play out.
The guy still has like ~35% approval ratings according to every poll there is, and that’s after weekly displays of outright corruption from him and his family, and “winning” the same war dozens of times already with no end in sight. The number hardly even budged YTD.
You’re telling me that this country is capable of learning?
I don't think most polling qualifies as statistics, without providing info like selection criteria or number of respondents. Otherwise we'll walk right into another situation like when Trump won an election while polling in near last place.
Or maybe I want something a little more significant than "we asked around the newsroom, and 35% of fox news reporters approve of the current administration". Cool, thanks, but that's not helpful or even a useful datapoint.
> I want something a little more significant than "we asked around the newsroom, and 35% of fox news reporters approve of the current administration". Cool, thanks, but that's not helpful or even a useful datapoint.
The state of the art (which confirms this ~35% approval number) is far more rigorous than that.
We'll see if that's true come the midterms. I have doubts Republicans can keep enough seats with that sort of approval, given it's much worse with independents, and the Republican candidates seem to be a lot weaker than their Democratic opponents in a number of key races, like Texas. Only thing I'm less sure of is the huge amount of Super PAC money Republicans have to spend on tight races.
It is lowest in history in this point of presidency apart from Nixon, who resigned at this point. That 30-35% is the floor, which won’t budge, likely because the hard core Maga Republicans have nowhere to go in US two-party system - which would be not just a surrender of long-held political beliefs, but a complete social death as well. This does not mean that the core Maga is very happy either, but they hope the movement continues after Trump so they can finally get the full Christian Nationalist Fascism they so desire.
I doubt that is going to happen. Trump is going keep the strings behind the party, fucking everybody hard, until finally he dies or otherwise implodes. What is left of American democracy when that happens is a whole another thing.
If you wanted a Russian puppet in the oval office, it would do exactly what Epstein's BFF Donald is doing. There are zero reasons to support anything Putin is doing (read: daily war crimes), however, the destruction from within in the US and EU is executed amazingly well.
The 65 percent approval rating from GOP voters right now says no, they are happy with immigration, culture war nonsense and trade chaos. Red states and rural areas would need to be targeted specifically and even then all interviews indicate those voters won’t consider choosing the other side, most of that GOP opposition will at best just not vote.
That’s good news to hear but the analysis in that article points out that many of these are people who supported Trump the third time(possibly in a row), after the rape trial finished and all the evidence of the first Trump term - maybe can’t put them all in the same bin but independent voters in the USA are not into long term thinking from all appearances, a slight decrease in gas prices would sway them the other way.
I understand how you feel I think you have to consider the lack of long term thinking is likely uniformly distributed among voters. Or said differently, if I read between the lines of what you're saying, I don't think dems are more capable of long term thinking. And even if they were, their failure modes are just as plentiful. Dems have failed to put forth a decent candidate in ages.
If you understand isolationism with consistent non intervenism, then swiss has done pretty well. If you understand it as really shutting yourself off from the outside world with literally destroying bridges - then North Korea is not doing so well.
> It’s the people that are the problem. These policies and politics will outcast Trump because middle Anerica and The South are filled with morons.
What a sad and tired take. Trump won both the electoral and popular vote. Discounting the opinions of over half the country as morons is exactly the type of behavior that got him elected.
Trump believes everything on this planet is zero sum, and the only way you can benefit is if the other party hurts. His entire history on this planet betrays this, where he is an unreliable scumbag to everyone he has ever dealt with, to the point where the guy couldn't find vendors or a bank outside of Russia to deal with him. And then Americans said "this is the guy we should put in charge".
It is a particularly interesting position when the US is trying to counter China. The only hope the US had was an alliances with other Western-style nations, but instead it has been nothing but attacks and diminishing.
> It is a particularly interesting position when the US is trying to counter China.
The US put countering China way behind on its priority list, below "owning the libs" and settling old scores. I am convinced that if the Iran decapitation had worked like Venezuela, which seems to have been what they expected, then Cuba would have been next.
I am surprised the USA has not attacked Cuba yet. I am guessing the rundown on missile stocks has eliminated the possibility of a 100 percent air/navy campaign like they failed at in Iran.
They've been farming the Cuba thing since the boomers were children. Every election there are bitter Floridian descendants of Cuban exiles to court. It would be insane for them to permanently resolve the issue, and any actual resolution would inevitably be a disappointment to them.
Exactly. Cuba is a pain in the US politics since generations now. If Trump would solve it, that would boost him. But if it fails, with declared victory but significant partisan warfare afterwards - not so much.
Attacking one of Russia's few allies and weapon suppliers is counterproductive to such a goal, even if higher oil prices also help the Russian state finances.
This ill-conceived, Kegsbreath-run operation depleted weapons stocks, gave enormous levels of intel on its systems (which both Russia and China are loving), burned through hundreds of billions in spend, and made Ameirca look like an impotent pathetic joke.
Yes, the Iran operation 100% served Russia and China. It could not have gone better for them.
And of course it helped Russia make hundreds of billions more on oil. Win win win.
The trade bazooka was an empty threat. This is somewhat similar to the trillion dollar coin[1]. It's a tool used for negotiations, not a real thing. If the trade bazooka was real, wasn't this the best opportunity to use it? What else could it be saved for?
You're not going to get free trade if it's unilateral, because you've then created an incentive for the other side to protect their own industries knowing you're not going to retaliate, while reaping the benefits of access to your market.
Unilaterally not hitting you head against the wall is bad, because you remove the incentive for the other side to stop hitting their head against a wall?
> while reaping the benefits of access to your market.
Huh, what? Trade is a win-win situation: you and your people benefit from imports, too.
The EU didn't really fold, they blew him off. It was just a bunch of "yeah sure Donny, here's a bunch of meaningless promises we have no ability or mechanism to actually enforce". For example they promised to buy a bunch of gas, but the EU has no mechanism to make companies or even member states buy gas.
The only real concession the EU made was just allowing Trump to tariff them at a certain rate, and not counter-tariffing back (with various escape clauses).
While the EU response certainly wasn't a feel-good display of chest thumping, I think it was somewhat effective. He was able to strut around and feel big, and they were able to move on.
The only reason the EU would really want to apply counter tariffs against the USA would be to either make a point, or because they are actually afraid that exports from the USA could outcompete EU products unless tariffed, but this just isn't really the case right now.
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The only form of retailiation I think the EU should actually be pursuing is the equivalent of tariffs on US software. This is the area that the USA is a highly competitive 'exporter', and putting up barriers agaisnt these software services would be a good way to hurt the USA, and protect / stimulate domestic alternatives.
To add into what you said. EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) already affects the United States, though its impact varies depending on the sector. CBAM is big permanent change, and that will be rolled in smoothly below all this.
EU has carbon tax internally and they are rolling out CBAM to prevent "carbon exports" (manufacturing stuff outside EU and then importing those product without tax). CBAM is currently used directly some high-emission sectors: iron and steel, aluminum, fertilizers, cement, electricity, and hydrogen.
EU importers require granular data on the embedded emissions (both direct and indirect). US companies in these supply chains have had to overhaul how they track and verify carbon intensity down to the sub-supplier level to help their EU buyers comply with strict European reporting standards.
EU will gradually expand CBAM after allowing supply chains to adjust.
If the Europeans really want to, they could produce a lot more by converting over to 'war mode'. Certainly they need to do more with current geopolitics, but there is no need to crank it to 11.
>if the Europeans really want to, they could produce a lot more by converting over to 'war mode'
As an Italian there's definitely been a perceptible shift due to the increase in defense spending. Leonardo now makes TV ads (something I had never seen before), they advertise on newspapers (...)
Of course, because Russia spends 7+% of its GDP on its military, and Italy 1.6%. It does say something about the relative capacity though. Russia probably cannot sustain this level of spending forever, and European countries could (continue) raising it if needed.
> Note that GDP does not directly translate into a number of tanks and missiles produced. I doubt Italy has more weapon than Russia.
Not wrong, but GDP is a rough metric of economic and industrial capacity. So if Italy wanted to, it could convert its economy to produce tanks and missiles at a similar rate as Russia is doing. And Italy is just one member of NATO:
You are not very informed on the EU's artillery shell production capabilities.
If anything, the major gap is the EU's lack of cheap drone manufacturing, but even that is starting to make progress with help and integration from Ukraine.
> You are not very informed on the EU's artillery shell production capabilities.
> In 2025, Russia produced an estimated 7 million artillery shells,
vs.
> Germany has rapidly scaled up artillery ammunition production, led by defense giant Rheinmetall. Output targets have surged from roughly 70,000 shells per year prior to 2022 to a projected 1.1 million to 1.5 million rounds annually by 2027–2030,
so now vs. "projected" and Russia still heavily outnumbers the former Nazis.
Which is to say give me a fricking break, I live in the closest EU and NATO capital city to Southern Ukraine, I know my shit.
Rheinmetall's current output is 1.1 million per year, aiming to hit 1.5 by 2027 and continue to scale up from there. That is just one company in one country in the EU, though they are the largest one.
The EU also simply has way more capacity to scale up shell production than Russia does, and the EU is building up stockpiles while Russia uses up everything they make.
Please. Russia had an economy of the size of Italy.
And I said "had", because this was before Ukraine destroyed most of their oil plants, and refineries, and their navy, and their petrol fleet, and the online stores, and before they killed a big chunk of their male workforce. And before they have an increasing debt with China and NK that they will need to repay somehow.
At this point everybody knows that the Russian economy will not survive after the war is over and that the country most probably will split.
Europe can deal with a ruined post-Ukraine war Russia.
They would just stand some suffering, but for sure 500 millions of motivated people can build more and faster than 100 millions of a Russia tied by deliberate anti-efficiency rules build to please oligarchs. The only question is how much damage could Russia do, before Moscow and St Petersburg are reduced to ashes as retaliation if they dare to try the final solution.
The hybrid war is the real problem. Russia can sponsor still many street "Syrian" terrorist attacks in Sweden, or cause a train wreck here and there, or burn Malibu for basically peanuts. They can do this for years and years.
I really would love to see this, but the sad truth is that there are no real alternatives for a very big amount of software products.
In the end, the eu residents will simply have to pay more for a lot of software products, and that's it :(
That's the initial impact, it's exactly the incentive that over time will create native competitors.
Yeah, there will be immediate pain but if EU competitors can spring up because the American software giants are disadvantaged it'll slowly erode the reliance on US's software.
The EU has no real reliance on US military might. Russia has been shown to be a paper tiger and the EU can use Ukraine as a proxy to cripple Russia while keeping their hands relatively clean.
I wish you were right, but look at Ukraine's desperate requests for Patriot missiles and Switzerland letting the US screw them repeatedly to get F-35 and Patriot.
Patriots are a big issue now, but they are also for the US after the Iran war. You now also see European countries starting to European alternatives as a result (e.g. SAMP/T and IRIS-T). While these are also still low(er) volume, the EU controls its own destiny by switching to alternatives to US systems.
Russia went into the war with armed forces that turned out as you say (possibly except the nukes, hard to tell unless they attempt to use one); the war forced them to develop substantial drone and anti-drone capabilities that the EU nations are not yet in a position to counter.
Yes and no. A lot of the drones are developed by Ukraine in cooperation with companies in EU countries and production facilities are being opened quite rapidly in European countries (e.g. VDL in NL, Innokas in Finland). The EU is pumping a lot of money into Ukraine and we learn a lot from Ukraine.
The EU would strongly prefer to have US military support, but does not fundamentally need it. In the miltiary domain, but also lots of other domains, the EU is using these fake promises they made to Trump as a mechanism to buy time while they quietly work on removing US dependencies, and reducing US leverage.
I suspect that if my country gave Putin what we give to the US - military bases where they can do whatever they please no questions asked, real-time intelligence access, unofficial favored supplier status for anything that might be control-relevant, quiet veto power over any national policy decision deemed "strategic" - then we wouldn't have to worry about invasion - from Russia anyway. Why invade what you already own?
I think that price is a little too steep, though. Not to mention that the US would then be at least as willing to topple governments/invade as Russia currently is.
Regarding the retaliation, I’m unsure who would be hurt more. There are very few ready alternatives to the MS office suite, and none with the close integrations like AD. Most corps run on Microsoft. If those contracts get slapped with tariffs they would become unmanageable to buy.
Then, because it isn’t on-premise anymore where you could just continue running without paying for the service contract you lose direct access to the product. So that might even mean whole companies going under.
The US sells software to the EU. To me is constantly amazing that US citizens and US gov thinks it can just pull the plug without consequence to itself.
You pull the plug the money stops rolling in. I don't know if you've ever tried to sell something vs buying something but buying is a ALOT easier than selling.
You can easily choose where to buy but choosing to sell is a lot trickier. Pull the plug on AI and the EU will switch to Chinese models. Trade negotiations and relations are very fragile and difficult to curate and maintain. Very easy to rip up.
You seem to ignore the fact that changes take time.
There are entire governments in the EU with workflows built around Microsoft products that have no real 1:1 alternatives. If a governmental procedure stipulates that a ministry uses Windows w/ Office365, it uses Windows w/ Office365, no room for an argument. If anybody pulls a plug here, the consequences will be unimaginable.
It's nice that a single German state has switched to LibreOffice, but the rest of Germany, or the remaining 26 countries might take years, if not decades, to certify and permit someone else's solution.
If the plug is fully pulled, the EU could confiscate some European Azure/Office365 servers and 'put the software on the market'. Windows is even easier, I'm sure in such a situation the EU would be happy to limit the restrictions on reverse engineering to block license verification. I'm sure that there are some hard drives on European territory with the full Windows source code as well.
There are so many things that can happen. Since tariffs are percentual, Microsoft could lower prices to avoid that companies will migrate to European alternatives.
In an all-out economic war, anything could happen. The source code of Microsoft products probably exists somewhere in Europe (since they have European offices) and definitely binaries, since it's run on European servers. Once nobody plays by the rules anymore, all bets are off.
That said, a trade war would hurt both badly and it would be an epic fail on the side of the US administration. (Since the EU would not start such a trade war by itself.)
If Europe does't buy gas from Russia then that leaves Qatar and the US. Qatar does sell a lot to Europe (hence you'll notice how "friendly" Europe is towards Qatar) but is vulnerable to instability in the straight of Ormuz.
The US are making a fortune on gas at the expense of Europe an it's not that the promise to buy gas is meaningless because unenforceable within Europe, it's that it was already happening in practice. And that makes Europe even more dependent on the US (while the complaint was that we could't buy gas from Russia and depend on them).
Not to mention current EU stated goals is to reduce consumption by 50% by 2030. Which is coincidentally pretty US and Russia imports combined sized, and timed pretty well with the expiration date of the EU/US trade deal.
Good graph that shows how imports from the US have exploded since Russia invaded Ukraine...
The UK is the same as the rest of Europe. They don't leverage their gas reserves and have a shambolic renewables and nuclear strategy (or lack thereof...)
UK has the seventh largest wind energy production per capita in the world and is 30% of their electricity and another 15% is nuclear. Have disagreements sure, but to say they lack a strategy says more about you than them.
Yes, the EU does rely on buying US gas as an important part of its energy mix. But that is true independent of whatever deal the EU struck with Trump. The EU simply does not have control of who its gas importers buy from (other than sanctions)
But this is also why the EU is aggressively pursuing and building up alternatives, including investments in Canada's ability to export LNG, but also buildouts of solar, wind, and batteries.
Solar and batteries come with their own dependencies on China, but at least those are a different sort of dependency than fossil fuels. If China stops exporting solar / batteries, the ones we have will still keep functioning for decades while alternatives are built up.
The EU is heavily investing in renewables, but mainly to phase out coal rather than gas, and it's absolutely not electrifying its economy.
You can see this in the EU Emissions Trading System. It covers about 40% of all emissions, but leaves out buildings (dominated by gas) and transportation (dominated by oil). Since electricity is covered, it actually encourages oil and gas over electricity.
Furthermore, member states like Germany are resistant to taxing gas higher than electricity:
Despite the wars in Ukraine and Iran, gas is still encouraged over electricity in many European countries.
China and some other Asian countries have adopted the opposite approach. They aim to replace oil and gas by all possible means, including coal (although it's not the preferred choice).
While I agree I wish this would happen faster, it certainly is happening, and it's happening pretty quickly. Saying it "couldn't be further from the truth" is just silly hyperbole.
There is plenty of gas in the EU; we decided that it was undesirable to extract. Honestly pathetic; strategic autonomy and energy security is much more important.
Yes. Strategically Europe keeps getting things wrong while, e.g., China keeps getting thingss right: they leverage their domestic coal reserves while going all in on nuclear and renewable, and they do it comprehensively with battery tech, solar panels tech, and EVs, too, as you can't lower dependency on foreign oil if all your cars run on petrol. But in fairness they didn't have the lobby of a powerful "legacy" auto industry (another textbook case of innovator's dilemma?)
I agree with your top-level-ish reply - the response by the EU was certainly smart and there are some really interesting things going atm that will loosen the dependency on the US. But just for _feel good_ I would've liked at least a bit more of a fight.
But re:DMA see the most recent Apple app store post on here. Kinda feels like the EU folded too easily there as well.
We still haven't seen what the EU's reaction is to Apple's latest app store stunt.
This would not be the first time that Apple unilaterally claimed something was DMA compliant, and then the EU had to come out and say "no, that's clearly not"
“The Commission welcomes the changes made by Apple to its commercial terms,” commented a spokesperson for the European Commission. This announcement, the spokesperson continues, is “the result of close dialogue between the Commission and Apple,” after the tech giant was found in April 2025 to have breached the rules of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and ordered to take the necessary corrective measures. In light of these developments and the changes to be introduced, “the Commission will monitor Apple’s effective implementation of the new conditions.”
You mean how they fined Google for 890 million under the DMA on July 23, 2026? Or how the Dutch AP just fined Uber for 825 million a few days ago under the GDPR?
Apple recently received a very favorable settlement instead of serious fines and enforcement actions for blatantly refusing to follow the DMA for the entire time it was in force.
In November 2025, they were working on gutting GDPR; I don't know what exactly actually passed so far.
Yanis Varoufakis - aside from being radically left and becoming the finance minister in Greece after their financial crisis hit - is a professor in game theory and economics.
He did a pretty good explanation of the difference between theory and practice in his Rest is Politics Leading podcast interview recently :).
I guess it has a little to do with your goals. Optimal trade economically or avoiding giving something that looks like a win to this type of politicians with the goal of avoiding re-electing trump. I don’t know what science say here.
Tarriffs will hurt your existing industries, they will lose sales/revenue.
Since you are getting hurt you play tit-for-tat to get the other to knock it off.
So you add export taxes to items they care about (oil/fertilizer/...) and compensate the losses incurred by existing industries.
You also add tarriffs on items that have alternatives, like alcohool.
Maybe add tarriffs on items with elastic prices, say 100% tarriff on digital services. Software services will have to adjust prices so they end up the same after tarriffs since few people will accept youtube or netflix doubling in price.
This hurts both countries but will get a result - either free trade or no trade.
In the meanwhile, Trump's entourage has derivative bets on this and take massive proffits shorting everyone. For them, this is all massively profitable.
Import tariffs and export tariffs have approximately equal influence on your economy. That's known as Lerner Symmetry. (A very narrow version of this can be proven in a mathematical sense, but the empirical effect is broader.)
For bilateral trade it doesn't matter much whether country A imposes import tariffs or country B exposes export tariffs.
Basically, the whole talk about retaliatory tariffs is silly.
> Basically, the whole talk about retaliatory tariffs is silly.
Why?, retaliatory - in response to US, tarriffs - taxes, whether on export or import, as you noted, doesnt matter much. Effect depends on who needs to either sell or buy the tarrifed items the most.
China put tariffs specifically on the sectors that voted for Trump and depended on sales to China.
When the other party is not playing the same game, or not playing in fairness, then the best game theoretical move is to cease cooperation and retaliate.
I’m interested to see if this spurs other countries to push back on this administration. Once you get a couple of countries to collectively stand firm is when things take a turn. Bullies can only push for so long
You could also try a bowl of mashed potatoes on Donald’s head.
This was one of the very embarrassing things that happened to Donald as a boy, done by Freddy Trump (his late older brother), when everyone had enough of him.
Take the USMCA - Canada and the US at times team up against Mexico and then the pendulum swings, line item by line item - no one has anyone’s back and they all have short memories
A deal with the US when others turns away from them is still a good deal
Pushing back against a US that is at this point economically and militarily dominant does nothing. It might push for cooperations outside the US-sphere.
Are they still dominant? They can't even win their war against Iran. And everyone is slowly moving away from the dollar. The US as world hegemon is counting its days.
To be fair as a percentage of exports, Canada (and Mexico, in different ways) is at a completely different level of economic integration than pretty much any other country. We have no choice but to take a unique stand. That being said, we are so lucky to have Carney at this moment. Canada hasn’t exactly had flexible, informed, and eloquent leadership in a long time that has been willing to think and work for the long term.
He provides some details about the last minute demands that the US made including restricting Canada's ability to trade with other countries. He also refers to the US signature as being written in "pencil".
Nice to see them putting up a fight. Though I assume this will cause pain for everyone.
One note: aren't these sentences strange - like a series of half-thoughts? Especially the 2nd paragraph.
> Our government understood, before many, that America is altering all its trade relationships. Putting tariffs on its closest allies and charging for access to its vast market.
>
> We have worked in that context. To strike a fair deal that would provide the best access to the U.S. market and greater certainty to Canadian businesses and workers.
Ever seen the Twilight Zone episode "It's a Good Life"? It's a tough situation when your opponent is an all-powerful preteen. No win scenario: perpetually give in to childish temper tantrums and everyone is worse off forever, or suffer the consequences of opposing the child.
Actually its the opposite. The pain of "giving in" is limited to specific Canadian industries and powerful stakeholders with a LOT of political influence. In the broadest terms, Canada's economy grows rapidly if they give in.
Explain how “Canada’s economy grows rapidly” if we accept a bad deal from a stronger economy. The goal for Canada is a return to the free trade agreement covering ~98% of goods that existed before this chaos, which allowed for close integration and long term planning for businesses on both sides of the border. Rolling over and dying gets us further away from that goal.
Well, a lot of the things people lump into the bad deal category are things like allowing us competition in our protected oligopoly industries: banking, telecoms, airlines, dairy, poultry…
Having those industries subsumed by the US would help us how?
Further, dairy and poultry are an interesting one. Do you think the US is asking us to eliminate supply management? Because you should know they aren't. They are asking us to keep it, but also to allow the US to dump their subsidized excess production here. How do you think that plays out?
But let's imagine that dairy became free trade (which is not at all what Trump is looking for, btw): Imagine that Canadian farmers, much like New Zealand farmers, make a product more efficiently than the US and start taking the US market? How do you imagine that plays out? Hint: It yields new protectionism, because the US can only win in every area.
There is no good play here but waiting for this pedo bag of shit and his administration of conmen and pedophiles (like that greaseball Nutlick) to be gone. At the same time removing all dependencies on the US.
> Having those industries subsumed by the US would help us how?
So is your position that only Canadian firms should be allowed to operate in Canada in general? Foreign competition helps us because then we benefit from further specialization and trade which increases everyone's standard of living.
> Imagine that Canadian farmers, much like New Zealand farmers, make a product more efficiently than the US and start taking the US market? How do you imagine that plays out? Hint: It yields new protectionism, because the US can only win in every area.
Well, who else benefits is consumers who get to purchase products of higher quality, convenience, and affordability. Also employees of the dairy sector who face higher competition from firms bidding up their labour. Investors, who have more investment opportunities and therefor higher yield. Government and entitlement recipients who benefit from tax revenues from these incomes and investments.
> So is your position that only Canadian firms should be allowed to operate in Canada in general? Foreign competition helps us because then we benefit from further specialization and trade which increases everyone's standard of living.
When you are 1/10th the size of your neighbour, this generally doesn't work to your benefit. Every integration has led to the hollowing out of Canada. NAFTA cum USMCA has been a catastrophic mistake for Canada, and we're so deep down that well that loads of idiots wants us to dig even deeper.
Right now the only rational action is starting the six month expiration on USMCA. It not only was always a bad deal, the compromises we made for it stay while the US tries to hollow out even more industry.
Won’t work out well for either side, namely citizens and leadership aside.
Wearing my forecasting hat…
Canada holding $200 billion in USA treasuries, one of the largest exporters of oil into the USA, and integrated supply chains for everyday goods. A fast and painful price shock is coming for every average American.
Canada has and will continue to be very dependent on the USA. No amount of new trade partners can change the fact that the largest economy in the world is a 2-hour trip down the road while everyone else is an ocean apart. This has a risk for long-term price pain for decades.
I don’t know offhand what the price of beef is generally these days (I am a vegetarian).
Generally speaking, capital and commerce steer towards efficiency. Goods from Australia will always be “less efficient” than goods crossing between Canada and the USA and Mexico due to geography.
The only way to make up for that difference is if goods are dramatically cheaper to produce (i.e China) to make up for the geographical barriers.
While it may work for beef, it can’t work for everything. So, Canada is generally stuck with the USA until it can find ways to export/import efficiently from other countries, and some things, like produce, can never work.
I wonder what would happen if Canada taxed electricity exports to the US, and used the money to directly subsidize other exported goods the US applies tariffs to?
it is easy to tax exports, but this makes the export less profitable (for the entity making that export). Unless you mean the producer raises prices to cover the new tax - in which case, the export is now more expensive, and less of it gets exported.
It doesn't really help with the tariff situation much in any case - a political problem requires a political solution (such as reciprocal tariffs). Both sides hurt, and there's no good outcome.
Oil and potash are made in provinces that have had their voter bases successfully propagandized by US Republican interests. They refused to get on-side at a political level.
Yeah, but export taxes are a federal responsibility. The fact that these provinces are irrelevant for the Liberals politically is those provinces' exact liability here.
If there's any way to swing the "referendum" in October in a very bad direction it would be to do this.
Right now Alberta and Saskatchewan are not suffering at all (2% of exports affected) from Trump's tariffs.
This is by design.
He (or the "smarter" people he surrounds himself with) is attempting to drive a wedge in Canadian unity.
Danielle Smith is, btw, totally onside with playing this to her advantage to get things.
Export tax, as just as it might be in these circumstances, would be used as pretext for wholesale foreign interference and domestic disruption on a level we have never seen in this country. It would end up being a profound self-own
If you are in Alberta or Saskatchewan, the government is decided before your election is done. There is no Senate, like in the US, to balance your needs vs others.
Despite this unbalance, there is a clear majority of Albertans who are anti-independence. (I agree that the government, run by a radio entertainer is shameful and disgusting.)
It might be good to tax exports and use the proceeds to subsidize Canadian consumers. This should snuff out the dependence on export to US pretty fast with little harm to Canadian companies.
The US would then just stop importing that electricity and funnel the power in from domestic sources. The electricity comes in from Canada because it’s cheap, not because the US can’t make electricity. Canada would shoot itself in the foot with this move.
It has been shown time and time again that the only thing the US administration respects is brutish headbutting, so I cannot blame the Canadian government for responding with such a stance. It is unfortunate for everyone though that it is happening. Ultimately, these tariffs just tax the consumer for no real gain on either side. I think I speak for many when I say 2028 cannot come soon enough.
A few months prior to the midterms is exactly the right time for this sort of action. If the voters keep seeing prices increase because of Trump's tariffs, it increases the odds that the republicans will lose the legislative branch and will be able to act as a check on Trump's power. Ideally some other countries will follow suit.
This will cause some short term pain for Canada, but hopefully they'll have a less insane trading partner after November.
Unfortunately I think the only usable big lever we have as Canadians -- wine/beer liquor imports and people choosing to restrict personal travel to the US -- has already been used. We cannot and will not exercise energy or potash restrictions. And import tariffs are unlikely to be substantially impactful enough for Americans to notice enough that it alters their decisions at the ballot box.
I would however urge my fellow Canadians to continue to or start boycotting goods from the US and travel to there, generally.
And likely encourage Americans to come visit here. Come ski here this winter. You're more than welcome here.
I think you are ignoring the situation of a WIN-win relationship where one party is winning much more at the other party's expense. Just because it may be net positive for both countries that doesn't mean that it's a fair arrangement. The excuse that the smaller winner is still technically winning is not a good excuse against pushing for a more fair deal.
In what way was the US not the big winner already? Canada bought all sorts of military equipment from the US, followed 99.9% of US foreign policy, produced tons of raw materials for the US economy and freely traded it for finished goods and consumables, contributed to many US wars. Canada gave US priority in pretty much every international trade and political matter and even bandwagoned onto many US laws.
Literally the only losing move was to mess with our relations to them.
You must have been living under a rock if you didn't notice how much did the US has thrived in the globalist world, and how much did it thrive more than the rest of its allies.
It's absolutely fair to count how much lumber and oil and cars you're importing-exporting while ignoring how much services in technology, IT, space, software, cloud, finance, etc, you're exporting. /s
> So anybody that will follow, regardless of the person's policies won't matter fully, as that person itself will be replaced 4-8 years later.
That is the fundamental problem. The only way out, is to make changes to the constitution to specifically prohibit the executive branch from having any of this power to arbitrarily change things on a whim. That is the only way international peer could in the future trust an agreement made with the USA.
As long as the US feels it is ok to sign an agreement and immediately violate it, nobody in their right mind will bother to negotiate any future agreements. Which is not a good state to be in.
It's not only the power structure, it's also the flawed democracy that allows gerrymandering and can only have 2 parties. It's the oligarch controlled media. It's the legalised corruption.
Very few “democracies”—a term that is more strained the more the structure of the political system structurally disenfranchises rather than represents views in the electorate—are as winner-take-all as the US, combining a strong Presidential system with FPTP voting, and basically none of any significance has as strong of a duopoly as the US.
Trump is using a few very specific laws. Congress could replace them if it were functional, and not ossified by Senate rules sometime allowing even 1/3 + 1 vote bloc a blocking veto.
That won't solve anything. Congress already has this power they just abdicated it to the Executive. The only fix is better voters electing better people into Congress. -- good luck with both of those. The US is cooked.
At least the timing of the turns is predictable... I imagine working with countries with snap elections is harder, especially when they have trouble forming a government.
You might think. The UK would be the most prominent example and in fact has been a much more predictable and consistent trading and negotiating partner than the USA
That is the one change, and it hasn't resulted in the thing people actually were voting for (but couldn't): less immigration. Because the state says we must just import 750k people a year, so that's that.
Made by the people rather than the politicians- the mainline politicians all thought it would/wanted it to fail- they just thought they’d get a boost from catering to a disaffected minority.
You didn’t say it and it may not occur to you, but you are correct, the UK is among the many sham democracies, which is arguably the primary objective of “democracies”; an illusion supported by a concept called choice supportive bias, i.e., if you believe the outcome of something was due to your own action, choice, or agency you’re prone to accept it, defend it, not question it, and ignore its detrimental effects.
It’s a rather diabolical form of control, democracy. “You have fake choices and you like … nay, you love what you choose”, quite literally. You have to love it, because you have to believe it’s true. And that’s where they latched onto your mind.
> The UK would be the most prominent example and in fact has been a much more predictable and consistent trading and negotiating partner than the USA
European here: Oh hell no. The Brexit breakup drama was years of chaos with each of the braindead Prime Ministers somehow managing to make things worse.
The EU-UK negotiations were mired in issues of EU maximalism; attempting to force each PM to agree a worse deal knowing not agreeing to it would cause short term pain for that PMs political situation. Its quite the thing that the UK managed to hold on as much as it did.
The UK was on the back foot in all negotiations having been forced into the Brexit outcome.
For all the nonsense printed in the UK and Continental presses, the UK had a surprisingly consistent position through the entire thing with clear threads of staff and policies still running to today.
There were no real negotiations, and there were never going to be. This has always been painfully obvious to anyone with even the slightest interest in EU foreign relations. The options on the table have always been the same:
You can be like Norway and join the EEA: full access to the single market, but having to make a financial contribution, accepting most EU laws, and with free movement of people. You get an exemption on some laws, but you don't get a say in any of the rules of the single market.
You can be like Switzerland and join the EFTA: partial access to the single market (notably not the banking sector), still have to contribute, only have to follow EU laws when it comes to trade, and still free movement of people.
You can be like Turkey: a customs union meaning no tariffs apply to EU trade, but you have to apply EU tariffs on all other trades and have no say over them.
You can be like Canada: a comprehensive free-trade deal which covers the majority of goods, but it means having to follow EU standards and requirements without having a say in them, and it probably won't cover services.
The EU was never going to give every Briton a magical gold-shitting unicorn, no matter how much the UK was going to plead and beg for it. It was more than happy to negotiate a deal on any of the options like those above, but it was up to the UK to decide what Brexit was going to look like.
But the Brexiteers promised the voters they could have their cake and eat it - "Brexit means Brexit", after all. Everyone invented their own personal idea of a Brexit, and the various interpretations were always going to be fundamentally incompatibly with each other! The negotiations went so horrible because the UK had absolutely no idea what it wanted, and any option was going to be wildly unpopular as it did both too much and too little at once. And all of that is before you take Northern Ireland into consideration, where the wrong move would result in a literal civil war...
Brexit wasn't a negotiation. It was a therapy session to help the UK find itself.
The EU position was consistent from even before the referendum: Either in or out of the single market, no cherry picking.
Each PM in the UK's neverending parade gained power by telling their electorate "I have this genius plan that'll totally let us cherry pick" only to be deflated when the EU held to its clearly stated position.
The problem with Brexit was that the Brits wanted something that was never on the table, they voted for Brexit under false pretenses and then got mad when they couldn't get what they wanted.
Cameron stepped down after he shat the bed, every PM was a Tory.
And yeah, the position was consistent. Before it was 'we could have all the benefits of being in the EU, with none of the down sides'. We could have soft Brexit, or the less popular hard Brexit.
Teresa Mays position was "Brexit means Brexit" and non of the others had a clue either. Because they promised everything to everyone. In the event we got a harder Brexit than the hardest Brexit discussed before the vote.
So if you want to say the UK was consistent, I say fuck you to the civil servants that consistently ignored the conversation prior to the vote.
Deliberative and hopefully self-stabilising. Real directional change happens over the span of a decade, not a few months. All arms of government (including non-kingship executive) brought to a rough consensus of choice and consequences.
> So anybody that will follow, regardless of the person's policies won't matter fully, as that person itself will be replaced 4-8 years later.
There is only one chance the US has - they need to do what us Germans were forced to post-1945, rearchitect everything.
The US and UK are the only major countries that didn't undergo some sort of revolution, war or other reset of their constitution and legal systems and it shows everywhere.
If we Europeans (or anyone else) are supposed to ever trust the US again, we demand they properly fix their shit and prevent another madman's rise for good.
I fear this is just the beginning, I’ve seen nothing to say the voting American public are any less into divisive politics than they have been for the last decade
Americans absolutely love winner-takes-all narratives. They love it and they dread our "beta" democracies that cannot achieve anything.
They'd rather fall into Russian models of government where a single person can promise you the world and you give it the power to do so, rather than bother with things like "compromise" or "representation".
Re-electing somebody who openly attacked the institutions, instead of taking what happened on Jan 6th as a wake up call is the clear sign.
You do realise that Germany had a shiny new constitution, and then went on to elect that Austrian painter. And that's after the prior new and shiny constitution leading into ww1
Afghanistan had a new constitution and legal system when the US pulled out.
As a Brit, my take away is that having a nicely laid out constitution doesn't matter if you don't have the culture there to back it up. The US did manage to deal with one term of Trump, so that's something.
Germany came into being in 1871, and was in essence a monarchy until 1918. The Weimar Republic was its first attempt at a proper democracy, and it included an explicit "in case of emergency, we can revert back to totalitarianism" clause. It was a democracy with a giant built-in escape hatch - which as we all know was immediately used by a certain Austrian painter to turn it into a dictatorship.
Germany's first two constitutions quickly failed because they weren't democratic enough. The US constitution - despite its obvious flaws - has somehow managed to make it 250 years without causing huge issues, but it is now becoming quite clear that there should probably be a revision to prevent another giant mess like the current one from happening.
> The US did manage to deal with one term of Trump, so that's something.
Trump caused a lot of suffering and damage even in his first term, his second term (especially "thanks" to DOGE) was orders of magnitude worse.
A good democracy can survive one direct hit, maybe two, but anyone with a working brain cell left can clearly see the cracks in the foundation one needs to exploit to become President - and there will be such exploitation attempts, unless by a huge wonder the next President will be a Democrat, have a majority in both chambers of Congress and prosecutes everyone involved in the Trump administrations.
Its nice to see some backbone, but the challenge for Canada is that it’s broadly in a weak negotiating position here. Generally speaking Canadian companies need access to the US market a lot more than US companies need access to the Canadian market.
In context, this only applies to oil that the US imports. That number means that of the oil that the US imports, 60-70% of it comes from Canada. The US currently produces more oil than any other nation. Your note should read "the US imports 60-70% of the oil that it imports from Canada"
- 100% of the natural gas
As mentioned above, this means that US imports of natural gas come exclusively from Canada. The US currently produces more natural gas than any other nation too. Your note should read "100% of the natural gas that the US imports comes from Canada"
It makes sense that Canada is sole source for imported natural gas since that is a product that is most efficiently transported in pipelines, like crude oil.
The way your numbers are framed seems to me to imply that the US is a net importer of oil and natural gas when in fact we began to ramp up exports of oil and natural gas (and coal) in 2006-2008 time period. Those exports helped the industry remain a dominant political force and provided a lot of seed money for the corruption that we have seen in the US since.
And Canada has also been passing up an absolutely enormous opportunity for industrial growth by spending generations supporting American industry by remaining a primary resources economy.
Notably, none of the goods you just mentioned about (energy imports, uranium, potash, etc.) have had tariffs applied by the Trump regime because they know all this. And it would be political suicide to apply an export tax on them.
No, instead the Trump tariffs have specifically targeted the regions of Canada that a) elect left of centre governments and/or b) have manufacturing economies.
So Ontario's auto sector, BC's forestry, and Quebec's aluminum and aerospace sectors.
Meanwhile Alberta and Saskatchewan -- which have compliant quite honestly pro-Trump governments -- have only 2% of their exports currently impacted by tariffs.
It has the look of an attempt at regime change, masquerading as economic policy.
>Canada is that it’s broadly in a weak negotiating position here.
That's an understatement. Hypothetically if Canada were isolated from the world, it would regress in the quality of life in 10 years. The most capable Canadians have moved out, mostly to the US. The average Canadian has unwarranted sense of nationalistic pride about them (compared to their neighbors).
Isolate US from the world, and assuming that the govt does not meddle too much with local businesses, in 10 years they will bounce back to being more self sufficient than it is now.
This is a useless hypothetical. Almost every country would regress in quality of life if it were suddenly cut off from the global economy. The options aren’t a bad deal from the US or complete isolation. Canada is making deals with reliable partners abroad.
By definition if you isolate a country from the world it would be more self sufficient that very moment than it is the moment before it is isolated. Isn't that obvious?
Agreed self-sufficiency isn't the best term.
But if I were to rephrase it, let say that self-sufficiency in terms of the quality of life - US would be in much better shape than Canada. Canada has _significantly_ much more to lose than the US.
The Atlantic has just posted a piece about this [0] in which it argues many points echoed in comments here. Chief among them:
> The Trump administration has one big idea about Canada: The U.S. is larger, stronger, and richer than Canada, so Canada must sooner or later surrender to Trump’s demands. That one big idea is wrong.
> Yes, Trump can hurt Canada more than Canada can hurt Trump. That part of Trump’s thinking is true. But wars are not decided only by the question Who can inflict more pain? Wars are also decided by the question Who can endure more pain? Trump’s failure to accept this truth is why he lost the Iran war—and why he is losing his trade wars.
Even with rising economic uncertainty within Canada, the LPC is enjoying ever-growing support amongst the Canadian voting public including amongst conservatives.
Premiers are almost united (excluding Alberta's Danielle Smith) in their support for Carney walking away from trade negotiations.
I get it, but tariffs will only make things more expensive for Canadians, too.
I've got a better idea.
1) Repeal all DMCA-like laws. Make it explicitly legal to break a digital lock to repair a device, run custom code, install third-party parts, or just tinker and hack with your own devices and software.
2) Ban parts-pairing. Prohibit manufacturers (looking at you Apple & John Deere,) from using cryptographic serialization to block independent mechanics and technicians from swapping parts.
That's it. This would make things cheaper and better for Canadians. Lutnick and Trump would seethe eternally, but it would be downright excellent for Canada and a shining beacon unto the world.
I'd be happy to see the solution to consumer pain And economic productivity to pass permanently pro productivity and pro consumer policies.
Anti monopoly stuff. Maybe a growth policy like land value tax.
I'd need to hear from some experts to know which specific policies would be best though. Ideally you choose some policies that are not perceived as going nuclear, or which leave open counters, or which you would want to remove after a deal is made.
In general, going heavier into consumer/data protection laws and proceeding to prosecute both the Canadian and American monopolies would be amazing though.
> In general, going heavier into consumer/data protection laws and proceeding to prosecute both the Canadian and American monopolies would be amazing though.
IMO you don't want lawfare -- but rather you want to remove bad laws like the DMCA (and related), and the life-plus-70 copyright term, and thus foster more innovation and growth.
It's easiest to repeal anti-consumer/anti-commons laws.
Cory Doctorow wrote a piece about DMCA wrt Canada and US tariffs in January [0], "A winning trade war strategy for Canada", which chimes with your position. I admire his work, and thought that you might like to read it, if you've not already done so.
I'd love this too, but it is impossible. If you believe it's possible then you fundamentally misunderstand how greatly coupled our countries are.
A rather large amount of Canadian industry is benefiting from these regulations. Adopting policies like these would be tremendously disruptive and cause a lot of short term issues, upsetting manufacturers, foreign owned subsidiaries (who employ a lot of people), unions and retailers.
> A rather large amount of Canadian industry is benefiting from these regulations. Adopting policies like these would be tremendously disruptive and cause a lot of short term issues, upsetting manufacturers, foreign owned subsidiaries (who employ a lot of people), unions and retailers.
And how would something like banning parts pairing "cause a lot of short-term issues"? Existing supply chains would remain intact. They'd simply be broadened, eventually, by new entrants. If incumbents leave the market in a fit of pique, you can rest assured that the gaps will be filled, and that those incumbents may very well be liable for breach of contract if they refuse to service existing Canadian customers.
The problem is that Canada makes ~1.3M cars/year -- and about 1M of those are for Japanese manufacturers like Toyota and Honda. With unbounded Chinese imports at Chinese prices, a sizable fraction of that domestic industry is going to vanish.
Yet what I'd suggest is to go a step further rather than retreat: Subsidize EV production (including from Chinese firms) on the condition that final assembly or some fraction of production is done in Canada. Keep the jobs, make cleaner cars more efficiently, and make them available to Canadian consumers at reduced (subsidized) prices.
...Then export those subsidized vehicles to Europe and wherever else, where they might benefit from favorable EU-Canada or Brazil-Canada trade policies.
> but tariffs will only make things more expensive for Canadians, too.
Yes, there is no war without pain. But I am willing to face the pain.
However, in the long run, the pain might bring good. It might help products from other countries to enter the Canadian market. I hope to see more food, cars and appliances from Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa in the Canadian market.
Motor vehicles is funny - tariff the vehicles owned by American companies (GM, Ford, Stellantis). I wonder how the CEOs of those companies react or communicate with the White House their feelings on this.
Can the US even afford a trade war, they are beginning to find borrowing more money increasingly difficult… currently the debt is around $130k for every man, woman and child in the US.
More difficult is a relative term. More difficult but still easier than other countries so the US remains in a stronger position here. The US can sustain the mess a lot longer than most countries can survive it.
Look at the wars the US fought after WWII: Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. The US suffered a lot less pain than any of those countries and was in a lot stronger position. But those countries were willing to face the pain, the US wasn't. That's why the US lost those wars. The same pattern goes now with Iran. You kill people on those countries, those countries hurt the American voters in their pockets.
In trade wars it might be the same mechanism. For the American people, a trade war is mostly to follow the glorious orange leader. For Canadians it is a matter of national sovereignty.
Gross debt to GDP ratio in the US has fallen from 130% in 2021 to under 125% now. It'll likely tick back up closer to 130, but it's been relatively flat.
Economic growth and inflation have kept pace with gross debt for a long time, and if the US continues to stay on top of the tech industry, the raw numbers will likely continue not to matter.
> Gross debt to GDP ratio in the US has fallen from 130% in 2021 to under 125% now.
Most of that was inflation, so it hurts U.S. citizens. I mean, you could reduce it even further pretty easily, but I'm not sure you would want to pay $1,000+ for a Big Mac.
The average American suffers being hated for this government and I say this currently sitting in a town filled with fly in rich American tourists to keep it alive. IMO the only retaliatory pain point for Americans to start to care will be taxing discounted oil, electricity, fertilizer, and transits of everything to Alaska. But they’ll just blame rather than support Canada. I don’t like Doug Ford or his policies but hopefully he brings up the electricity thing again as leverage because it won’t happen in the other sectors given AB separatism and SK being, well, SK.
What unity? They didn't take American liquor off the shelves during the last round of this mayhem unlike every other province, we have no reason to expect solidarity this time.
Canada needs to create an "Economic Reparations Fund" to help those workers and companies harmed by trump's tariffs. Its initial funding should come from selling $10B of US bonds (Canada is ~5th largest holder) and a 5% surcharge on oil exported to the US. US already extracts a 12-22% discount off world oil prices from Canada (who's taking advantage of who?) so 5% shouldn't be an issue. As needed to cover damages, more bonds could be sold and the oil surcharge could be raised.
For some perspective about what’s being negotiated:
“What’s at stake in the Canada-U.S. trade deal? How looming tariffs could cost Canada 90,000 jobs”. Trevor Tombe, professor of economics at the University of Calgary
Reciprocal tariffs alone don’t make much sense, it’s just making things for Canadians more expensive with an adversary that’s larger and can sustain them longer (although how long remains to be seen with guilt yields rising.)
If they really want to hurt them start making it legal to circumvent DRM on American products and allow build meaningful replacements.
Well it's 73 days till the midterm elections so we'll see what happens. Signing a bad deal when the political landscape could dramatically change in a few weeks never made sense.
If this was even close to true, why did basicly this exact same move work when china did it and when EU threatend to do the same before.
And from a different angle: “giving fines to firms makes no sense since they firm can only get money from customers so it’s just going to make it more expensive for the customer”.
Not an identical situatio, but to say it’s the only consequence, that it becomes more expensive for Canadian, is just not right.
You’d have to tariff fruits and vegetables like crazy to make the American varieties more expensive than oceanic shipped produce. That seems a fairly steep price for the Canadian consumer.
Which highlights the problems with tariffs, they are self harming. You have to be willing to give up better alternatives for some other reason, and food is a hard one.
> You’d have to tariff fruits and vegetables like crazy to make the American varieties more expensive than oceanic shipped produce.
Bullshit. I already see in the supermarket (Canadian Superstore) oranges from South Africa, lemons from Morocco, broccoli from Mexico, mangoes from Malaysia, fish from the Philippines, coconut from Vietnam, kiwis from Italy, etc.
Yes, oceanic shipping adds to the cost. But most of those countries already have cheaper labor, and that partially offsets the extra cost.
Mangoes and South Asian fish don’t grow close to you no matter what. You don’t think bull shipping Mexican tomatoes via the ocean isn’t going to cost more than the same tomato shipped by the US land route?
If you were going to take that tariff money to build up a local tomato industry it might make sense, Canada already has a growing hot house industry. But don’t kid yourself, tariffs cost the consumer and for low margin highly seasonal and subject to going bad goods like produce is about the worst case scenario.
If you want people to buy stuff from you Americans then just try to stop pushing forward American imperialism down into everyone's throats. This isn't just about money, it is about my country's sovereignty.
I've always said that the only way Trump would "Make America Great" would be to show the world how completely hollowed out by kleptocrats we've become.
These moves increase other countries independence of us, lessening our power and forcing us into a more post America world.
If Trump isn't a double agent then he missed his calling. It feels like every decision they are making is intentionally the "wrong" one.
Huh 30% of our lumber just got 50% more expensive. Good thing we don't have shortages of affordable housing that need new construction to solve. Brilliant stuff Donald. Truly some 4D chess moves.
indeed. i'm sure he's surrounded by some lumber moguls stateside that are going to get very rich from this. very russia coded.
i don't doubt deregulation on clearcutting as well as removing land ownership and no logging in national forests & protected lands.... are around the corner with this admin. feel like they attempted that during his last term with attempting to disgrace park rangers over wildfires and saying they didn't rake the leaves on the ground or whatever.
EDIT: Adding a TL:DR, this article explains how the Trump admin reduced the size of two national monuments by 90% and 91% respectively. This is just one example, there are more and most of them are out west in lands untouched for nearly a century. Saved for posterity because once they're gone, they're gone.
I think the clamoring of the aesthetic of impartiality is destroying interesting discussion. The president is currently lining his pockets with tax payer dollars and being an overall bumbling buffoon. It is not partisan when the would view the US as weaker, less intelligent, and less reliable. Its consequences of inaction and bad policy of the current administration
You should try programming language X vs language Y, cloud vs on-prem, Framework A vs Framework B, OOP vs Composition etc., etc. HN is as partisan as it gets.
• PHASE 1: COLLECT UNDERPANTS. (tariff "foreign" goods desired by Americans, collect upon import from companies, clarify spiked prices experienced by consumers ‘entirely’ due to prior admin policies)
• PHASE 2: … (let simmer)
• PHASE 3: PROFIT. ("return" tariff costs to companies)
It's worse than that. He is so completely off that he thinks this means US builders will chose to buy US lumber instead and that will work out positively for everyone in the US.
The "make more money" rationale is way too logical vs how this guy's brain operates. It's better understood as being like Pro Wrestling. Except the "ring" is the world economy.
If it was a coin flip, there'd be a 50% chance he did good things every day and we'd have a significantly better outcome than we do now. Its many times worse than a coin clip.
Indeed. Donald Trump is only the visible tip of an iceberg. Below the waterline it's a massive and all encompassing corruption, comprised of an organized multi-national cabal that touches every part of the globe and which has its roots in the world starting well before WWI. The goal of which appears has always been to enrich the people on the inside while sewing chaos. To these figures, war and peril have always been more profitable than making peace.
Price is set at the margin. If America is physically incapable of supplying 100% of its own lumber needs, then that Canadian lumber is the marginal good, and the price of 100% of lumber will go up, not just the Canadian stuff.
Two things that will prevent that:
- inertia
- it's likely that Canadian lumber before the tariffs wasn't the marginal good, wasn't the highest cost supplier. If Canadian suppliers were making 10% more profit than the previously marginal supplier, the price will go up 40% instead of 50%, Canadian suppliers absorbing that 10%.
Or they'll raise prices by that ten percent and become the marginal supplier. No way they're going to accept a loss. (Many items shipped into the USA of late have tariff related fees.)
I know you're being facetious, but his entire immigration policy is to deport a large part of the construction labor pool, so he was never had a chance to make housing more affordable.
Please be aware people reading don't know which country you are from, so using "our" is ambiguous. You could just as well have been Canadian, and it took extra deciphering to guess you're apparently from the US.
Geography as in softwood forests, instead of the iconic maple leaf. In no way Canada would be importing 30%+ of its construction timber from the US. Canada is a major softwood timber exporter.
This comment seems exactly like the school room exercise where the teacher hands out a test with a paragraph of instructions that includes the text buried in it: "do not answer any questions below" and students rush through the test and fail because they didn't bother reading the entire comment before ripping off their own because "our" is ambiguous. There is plenty of context in the comment, even for non-North Americans, since its very unlikely "Donald" was referring to famed Canadian-actor Donald Sutherland.
Or would you prefer every comment on HN to begin with: "As a/an $CountryDemonym..." or other requisite bona fides?
His negotiating methods, if one can call them that, are like "single use weapons" that are relationship burning rather than building. If you are doing 100s of one-off deals with counterparties you will never talk to again, and who don't know each other.. it might actually work.
But you burn the ability to make more deals with the same counterparty again.
If you played this game with your neighbor over a fenceline or tree limb dangerously overhanging into your yard.. you would save a few bucks once, and have an antagonistic relationship for the next 10-20 years of living next to them. Good luck getting the benefit of the doubt next time.
Imagine seeing American wealth increase dramatically over the past several decades, see tax burdens drastically reduced on the top 0.1%, and see almost all of that drastic increase in wealth go to that 1%, and not be able to come up with a solution other than “well, against all evidence I think trade is zero sum”.
And worse, your solution then is tariffs, which are little more than a sales tax which are disproportionately paid by the poorest.
This is a painfully "coastal elite" take, and totally misses why blue collar middle America fell over themselves to get Trump in office.
Trump is doing exactly the things the people who voted for him want him to do, however backwards that is on the whole or however backwards it appears to white collar well paid service industry workers (the richest class of Americans,richer than the 1%, FYI)
It's easy to be upset when you see the wealthiest class of Americans spend all their money on cheap Chinese versions of what you build. Not even because they cannot afford your products, but simply because they can cost cut by going with China.
This rot is also existential, because as domestic players die, that knowledge is also lost.
The wealthiest Americans aren't buying shit from China, I have no clue where you managed to get that point from but they're buying boutique shit from Europe or elsewhere.
American-made goods have the worst cost:quality ratio for multiple reasons. Capitalism hollowing out quality, businesses capturing markets. They sit in an area which are unaffordable for your average American as a result of the middle class vanishing and not boutique enough for the wealthier ones.
People voted for a wealthy man to loot everything and he's doing exactly that.
Like I said in my earlier post, the richest group of Americans is not the 1%. It's middle/upper middle/upper class suburbia.
This is even more pronounced because these are the people with cash who spend it. Billionaires aren't bingeing Amazon, shien and temu. That 60-90% class of Americans are the backbone of the economy. And they buy tons, tons, and more tons of Made in China.
You're right, I'm sorry, it's the 60-95%* that are the richest.
The one percentage have a staggering amount of wealth, but it's mostly in assets.
The "upper/upper middle class" have just as much, but it's much more heavily in cash. Those people and their spending is what keeps the economy moving. ~70% of GDP comes from them.
You should check the actual wealth distribution rather than just reading incessant "The 1%..." headlines.
It's crab bucket mentality. Poor Americans think if they just fuck over enough other people things will magically improve for them. But that's not how it works.
The cost of living skyrocketing is bad for blue collar workers. They suffer the most, actually, because proportionally more of their income is eaten. Salary-paid workers eat the cost much better. The wealthy, even better.
Wages are not increasing fast enough to replace the cost of food and materials. Materials matter because they make up everything. In the interim, hourly-paid employees are suffering.
You cannot increase wages without the money to do so. The factories are broke too. Manufacturing has these fundamental deficits that make it very capital punishing compared to software or finance, or consulting.
Britain is a better example of this because it's much smaller. The country is pretty much London with wealthy desk workers, and then the rest of country with hollowed out industry that is borderline 3rd world.
Naturally the economy wants to kill inefficient businesses, and let the workers fall off the societal wagon. So the question is how do you stop that.
The right says protect industry so they can have jobs, the left says tax rich people so they can have handouts.
This is true, but the problem is accelerated with poor fiscal policy like everything the Trump administration does. Tariffs ultimately hurt manufacturing, not desk workers. The idea was solid: implement tariffs to encourage domestic manufacturing. Except, domestic manufacturing requires materials, which are now tariffed. And the tariffs are so volatile that any capital investment, outside of maybe datacenters and some others, is suicide.
The right says give them jobs, but in reality, their policy destroys jobs. It doesn't help that GOP fiscal policy also implodes the deficit further than it already is, so now you can't even use that money to stimulate businesses. We're stuck in a corner. It will take decades to fix this fiscal mess, and in the meantime a lot of people are going to suffer.
I'm not sure about the coastal elite view, but Trump was absolutely elected on the platform of I'll hurt the people who hurt you. You're correct about that.
The business-as-usual multi-international neoliberal supply chain model wasn't benefiting a vast number of Americans with no solution other than "don't complain look at these metrics we made up, you're doing great, don't be upset we are making billions while you struggle to afford to fix your teeth or fix your car". Something had to break and break it did.
If you are so non-zero sum, what would you suggest as the fix for those issues if we kept the old model?
Americans are upset about not having any money while being the richest and most powerful country in the world. They are throwing a temper tantrum about a world order they created and are the main beneficiary of.
There's a class of americans that didn't benefit from that world order. However, they elected someone who pretended he was going to help them, and actually is making it even worse for them and better for those who were already benefiting.
Here's what I don't get about this: Trump's main campaign promise was to raise prices for American consumers (via tariffs) and to harm the lowest wage earners the most (tariffs as sales taxes are regressive).
Going against "business as usual" resulted in higher prices, as predicted and promised.
Nearly everyone here benefited from lower prices afforded by reduced trade barriers. This isn't some obscure hidden fact.
The mistake here is letting the word benefit do all the heavy lifting. You cannot define benefit in a superficial way and expect things to make sense. Notions like "let them eat cake", or trickle-down-economics, also abuse and distort the notion of benefit. "System X benefitted all Americans in a trivial way" smacks of that kind of false reasoning.
Trump is and always has been a one-trick-pony: Shock and awe with a ridiculously over-the-top threat to shake his opponent and anchor the discussion high, then "accept" a deal that's better than any that could have been achieved with a calm opponent (pure bullying).
His second weapon is throwing a monkey wrench into the works after agreeing to something. Keep the opponent on their back heel.
It works well, until it doesn't. Once you meet an opponent who stands firm no matter what you threaten, you lose your bargaining position. Carney is well-versed in this kind of negotiation.
Right it probably works in real estate if you aren’t dealing with the same trading partners often. It is a business where dirtbag behavior is the norm.
May also explain why he stopped doing actual NYC RE dev and moved onto his licensing model in dozens of cities (new pools of suckers).
But when every threat & walk back is covered in national media, and he is playing the same game with the same big trading partners .. it loses its effect. Similarly he’s quite old and certainly lost any touch he had.
You gotta think long term. This is going to cause all those lumber companies to plant more forests and 40 years from now when they’re big enough boom, 3 new jobs servicing the autonomous tree harvesters.
Yes the average is currently 45%. But that’s been like that since Sept 2025, when Trump increased it 10% with section 232 tariffs. Here’s the executive order
I read the article, I don't take away from it that Canadian lumber is suddenly 50% more expensive. It explains that tariffs for some Canadian lumber products was set to 50 percent at some point (or maybe lowered again, and raised, it's hard to tell since the Trump administration has issued 50+ different tariff directives in the last year), and that Canada walked away from negotiations recently.
I tried to do some more research before my coffee finishes in 5 minutes, you're right it's not ALL Canadian products or even all Canadian lumber products.
> Canadian negotiators also hoped to achieve some relief on softwood lumber tariffs that go back decades and were augmented with additional tariffs from Mr. Trump.
These are preexisting trade issues that were being negotiated. The new 50% tariffs are on other industries. Lumber trade issues predate this administration, and aren’t involved in the new 50% that’s put on $20B on other industries.
Not sure if you're joking, but I remember noticing the same thing last time I spent time there (2017). Lumber yards tend to have a lot of lumber. It's kind of like when you drive by a feed lot and they have an implausible number of cows (the ones over in imperial valley amazed me). Also there's always tankers by my house in Manhattan Beach. These anecdotes are not economic indicators.
Tariffs in and of themselves might make sense, but the process has been arbitrary and illegal. There needs to be some sort of a plan to these things, and there is no apparent plan here.
Trump doesn't have the legal authority nor the mandate to enact arbitrary tariffs. His previous attempt ended with the Supreme Court declaring his tariffs illegal. This was the President of the U.S. willfully breaking the law, and he's doing it again. The law is not meant to be stretched into whatever shape Trump wants.
And Trump has given no thought to his tariffs. There is no analysis underlying it. It's just him acting out like a child and trying to get some kind of "win" that he can sell as a personal triumph.
You cannot negotiate with a country that doesn’t stand by its word.
All other issues aside, Trump and the Republicans love to boast that they aren’t bound by anything including their own promises. This is the end result of that.
You’d be mad to cut a deal with the US right now. The Trump Admin will just try to take another bite. They are dishonest and unreliable. Making America’s word mean nothing is the greatest long term damage done to the country and the surest indicator of the end of the American Century (80 years but we can round up)
It has to do with how America politically structured. The trade nego change every 1-2 terms. China is much more consistent in this, and will scrap all markets from America in the long term. I simply dont see America able to force a Plaza Accord out of this. Japan fizzled because of that. But China wont. And China now backed by Russia, world powerhouse of fossil and minerals. Russia has way more natural reserve than what Venezuela America and Middle East officially published.
It would be the most effective way to hurt Americans.
But it isn’t politically possible for Canada to do this. The two segments that would be most effective, oil & gas and potash happen to come from provinces that already have significant issues with the federal government. One is even flirting with separation, which would be inflamed by export taxes.
Canada is also very venerable to similar actions by the Americans. Refined oil products, fertilizers and oil & gas pipeline transit all come from the Americans.
It is fun to imagine Canada sticking it to the Americans with export taxes, but it will never happen.
Sure, but I am also not sure it's really that essential. People can grumble and either pay or not buy. Potash cannot really be not used in modern agriculture.
Maple farms take decades to reach maturity. The US imports about 4x more maple from Canada than Vermont’s entire production capacity. It’s not possible.
So consumers will pay double or substitute with flavoured corn syrup.
Scarcity is not really the problem—it is price competitiveness. Many, possibly most, maple syrup producers in New England do not sell to national grocery store chains. You go to the sugar house and buy a jug which is typically much more expensive than what you’d find in a grocery store. But you also have more choices, since you can buy from a person who sells different grades. I rarely see more than one grade for sale in a US grocery store. I don’t mind paying a little extra for something I use in such small quantities to support a neighbor.
> Many, possibly most, maple syrup producers in New England do not sell to national grocery store chains.
But scarcity is the problem. Unless you're able to demonstrate that the low supply is artificial, and that maple syrup producers are a cartel and restrict their own production and distribution chain, as well as block any newcomers from trying to enter large-scale production.
Because as is is, if they manage to sell their entire supply through their sugar shacks, then it obviously means they don't have enough capacity to supply grocery chains, let alone on a national level. That's the literal definition of scarce supply.
Note that these new tariffs are on goods covered by CUSMA, making that treaty inoperative. Pity it’s one Trump signed…
One must stand up to bullies otherwise they’ll keep at it. Until the US population feels the pain the rest of the world has been dealing with, nothing will change.
Oh, we’re feeling the pain. Anyone trying to actually build things in the USA relies on an increasingly unpredictable and expensive global supply chain.
What he’s been doing is only good for his grift game, not the USA.
If you want to bring manufacturing home, you frame a 5-10 year progressive tariff plan with tax incentives, financing, and grants to help build the infrastructure to progressively fill the demand as the tariffs roll in. Commerce thrives in stable environments with predictable changes, not in chaos and broken promises.
Unfortunately, it became so impossible to do business in the USA for many companies (where there isn’t a monopoly and you have to compete globally) that we left.
I moved ops to a Caribbean nation where we can get parts, (it’s simply not possible to source many parts and services within the USA anymore without paying 2-3x in fees or enduring weeks to months of delays in customs) and iterate at a competitive speed.
R&D in the USA went from riding a sport bike to swimming in molasses with crocodiles basically overnight, way too unpredictable to even sign contracts with suppliers, with random tariffs creating 2x cost uncertainty.
You simply cannot plan or make long term contracts when the uncertainty is so high with no predictable pattern. Ironically, we also cannot sign even with US suppliers, because they don’t know if they will have ongoing tariffs to protect buildout or if they will evaporate, so they also cannot risk expanding production.
It’s a total shitshow and the only reason it exists is to power the grift train. If a company is big enough, some shady deal goes down and suddenly they magically qualify under de minimus or some other supposedly dead exemption. I would not be surprised to see that you could correlate these exemptions with purchases of shitcoicins or similar shady wanker-works. The trade shenanigans do nothing to help US businesses, and drive innovation out of the USA like rats off a sinking ship.
It's like Americans are on a train and some of them are being rowdy, rude, aggressive. They find a few passengers to harass. One they lock in a lavatory. Another they throw off the train for not being the right kind of American. Some have opened windows and are actively throwing their feces at whoever they're passing by. And the strongest response mustered by the other passengers is to avoid catching attention, and a meek self-soothing utterance of, "a station is coming up soon and we can vote to kick them off." Except this is the fourth two-year cycle that they've just gotten back on, broken up only by a four-year period underscored by a loud and somewhat violent insistence that their right to throw feces from the train shall not be abridged.
I don't find analogies like this helpful for thinking about this, because they don't illuminate anything about what is being suggested. In your analogy, I could come up with some ideas about what the "passengers" could do prior to reaching the next stop, but that wouldn't tell us anything about what we should do in the real situation.
What John Lewis tried to suggest to you all. Good trouble. Necessary trouble. If you in good faith need someone else to tell you what other options you have, ho buddy have you guys lost the trail. My original point is that Americans won't do this until they hit a tipping point of discomfort. And for Americans, that tipping point is a very high mark. They will tolerate an enormous amount of fecal frenzy so long as they can just look the other way and plug their nose.
What good trouble would you suggest that would be more effective than seating a new Congress?
I'm a big fan of the civil rights movement, but a lot of this kind of stuff like your comment that I see strikes me as nostalgia that doesn't seem to understand what made that movement effective. It was effective because they thought, concretely, about their goals and about what concrete steps they could take that they thought would make progress toward those goals. That concreteness always seems (to me) to be lost in these contemporary discussions, replaced with "do something" and sloganeering.
Another difference, in my view, is that John Lewis was trying to figure out how to change a system in which there was no hope that the next election, or the one after that, or the one after that, ad infinitum, would itself affect the desired change, because both parties were opposed to the policy he desired. In my view, that's not the current situation. This thread started out being about the Trump administration's tariff policy (which I think is awful and stupid). But the next Congress, which will be seated quite soon - certainly much sooner than any kind of civil disobedience campaign would be able to bear fruit - can write laws that change that policy. And the more people are mad about the current policy, and the more they vote for the opposing party because they are mad about the status quo, the more likely that new Congress is to write those new laws.
There are times when it makes sense to lose faith in normal electoral politics, but in my view, the eve of an election where the incumbent powers are about to get routed is a weird time to suggest it.
If you're going to start a war, don't lose. Things in the US are not to the point the people needed would defect to the strike.
It brings up the 1940s struggles of labor, industry, and .gov, and labor lost and had its back broken. Could labor outmaneuver industry and the state today if we ran it back?
Ok but a general strike is both way less likely to be successfully organized and way less likely to change Trump's tariff policy than just electing 51 Democrats to the Senate in a couple months.
I do appreciate the concrete suggestion rather than the vague "do something", but another attribute of the civil rights movement was that their goals were modest and their "good trouble" targeted at achieving those goals were things they could actually organize. I'm sure John Lewis would have always loved there to be a general strike to achieve his desired policy, but he and his movement understood what they could and couldn't actually organize.
No doubt it’s going to be difficult and require hard work to get rid of him.
But the internet makes organizing a general strike exponentially easier than it was in the past.
If you don’t like the general strike idea, what is your suggestion?
I think you’ll need to revisit this in a few months when he finds a way to make the election ineffective, and/or just keeps doing what he’s doing regardless.
And again in 2029 when he doesn’t leave the White House.
False. I'm in the trenches on the cross-border trade and issue in general every weekday. Investment, industrial production and migration of CAD businesses to the US is rapidly growing. Nothing Canada can do will reverse this, though several storms on the horizon unrelated to Canada could slow it.
It's ironic that the US might currently do better with a (constitutional monarchy) king, to serve as an ethical example of living and governance, and change the role of the president to more of a serving bureaucrat
In the UK we've been lucky with our royalty recently, but with a different roll of the genetic dice we'd have Randy Andy as king instead of Charles.
Anyway, you have kings, you just elect them and call the presidents, but they have basically the same political role and powers as George III did in the 1790s cut-and-pasted across. The USA needs to get itself a decent parliamentary system.
Isn't that an oxymoron? Parliaments have their democratic shortcomings compared to powerful presidents. And vice-versa. Nations with parliamentary rule are plagued by having heads of state and ministers which weren't in any way, shape, or form elected by the population. A president is at least a democratically elected ruler to represent the people.
I'd argue almost the opposite: America's governing system (and the political culture of rejecting hereditary rule) is a big part of why it became so successful.
There's arguably a straight line from the Commonwealth's greater deference to inherited authority to today's tolerance of weak borders, stagnant growth, and declining economic mobility. A king seems like more of the thing that caused the problem, not the solution.
Have you read John Steinbeck's "The Short Reign of Pippin IV?" [0] All political sides in France frustrated decide to create a constitutional monarchy. The Communists supported the idea because it would give everyone something to revolt against.
The craziest thing is, that in spite of the obvious, balatant corruption and supreme incompetence of the US govt, Trump still has around 35% approval rating.
That means the hardcore MAGA base is a third of the US population. I genuinely don't know how to reconcile that with the long term future of the United States.
In Pale Blue Dot, Carl Sagan referenced some survey from the 80s in which one of the findings was that ~20% of Americans agreed to the statement "the sun is alive." In trying to find that survey for this comment I instead found this one from Time in the 2000s [0], in which 26% of Americans (N=2200) responded that the sun revolves around the Earth. America is a big and diverse place, full of people that have little attachment to reality.
As a constitutionalist American, I really wish I had an answer for you. The best I have is that two-thirds of the country thinks he's off-base. But I can only agree that's an alarming figure.
It seems like a lot of the governmental structure of this country is predicated on the idea that the People will not elect someone who puts their own interests over those of the nation. And when we do, the whole thing starts to unravel.
>The craziest thing is, that in spite of the obvious, balatant corruption and supreme incompetence of the US govt, Trump still has around 35% approval rating.
Not to diminish you statement, but you are right.
Something similar can be said about Canada. In your sentence replace:
US with Canada
Trump with Carney/Trudeau/Others
35% with 95%
and the situation can be summarized as significantly worse in Canada.
Americans love to single out Trump, but he’s just a symptom of an epidemic of civic unfitness that is hollowing out the country. It underscores why the only correct move for the world is de-Americanization. Make them economically and militarily unnecessary and they might even be forced to once again behave correctly, even if out of necessity.
It's the "crazification factor", which is the idea that 27% of the American population will always vote for the stupidest option. So, that 27% is Trump's true floor. He's pretty close to it.
Looking past the political posturing i cannot even find any objective information about what the terms were. I just wish they could say what was the state of the deal and why it broke down in some detail.
These tariffs will be struck down as unconstitutional just like the ones Trump attempted under the IEEPA were. Any company who paid in the meanwhile will be compensated while consumers will get the short end, so it will be a nice payday for northern importers.
It's Congress who has the power to tax. If Trump wants tariffs he needs to propose a bill that creates them or gives him clear powers. The legal scholars in his cabinet know this, so why has he not proposed a bill?
Regardless of our different readings of the SCOTUS’s recent opinion, statutes are a poor process for imposing tariffs. The legislative process is intentionally slow and difficult. It’s suited to permanent laws, not diplomacy and negotiations.
Statutes can delegate the president tariff powers and appropriately circumscribe them, and that's what both the IEEPA and Trade Expansion Act did - they gave the executive tariff authority in certain circumstances.
Trump is stretching the definition of those circumstances to the limit, in my opinion, especially because protectionism is the fundamental policy being pursued. If we want general protectionist tariffs than the law should be passed that enables the executive to do so, but that hasn't been forthcoming.
How effective are tariffs as a trade negotiation tool if your counterparty believes its likely the courts will take away the big stick?
There is no reason for tariff policy to be made quickly. Indeed, it would be much more effective if it could change only very slowly, because any positive effects tariffs may have rely on businesses having certainty when making decisions with multi year horizons. Only a fool would make a decision about where to build a new factory based on the Trump era of whim based tariff policy.
Amazing that in 2026 Canada, Iran, and US Circuit Courts have the same stance: the US federal government cannot be trusted to tell the truth about anything. Fish really rots from the head.
"However, last-minute changes in the U.S. proposed terms were unfair, uneconomic, and called into question the reliability of any deal."
It seems like if the other side agrees to a deal too easily then Trump doesn't think the deal is good enough. He only likes deals where the other side is getting screwed and has to be coerced into signing.
> It seems like if the other side agrees to a deal too easily then Trump doesn't think the deal is good enough.
That's a great observation. So basically everybody should be saying no to him all the time to limit the damage because as long as there's one yes the stupidity will only grow.
I'm so glad there wasn't a single yes, when Greenland popped up.
Carney had to take a stand, the last few moves he pulled angered a lot of people. For example he started talking about asking the provinces to put US booze back on the shelves which for us who boycotted prior to the govt saying it was a good idea, is giving up our leverage before any demands were acquiesced. He's playing the same song with the digital media tax and even with the case that made Meta forego all Canadian news outlets.
Basically he was elected to stand up to Trump and as an economist, come up with a strategy. He initially appeared to do that, but given that it largely hasn't swayed Trump, he is now backing off most of it. You could argue it's a strategy worth trying since to buck-for-buck hasn't worked, but you could also make the point that the electorate, without being told what the plan is (duh), feels he is weakening our position.
A lot of the strategy has been to wait it out and expect uproar from the US people which... largely hasn't come.. yet?
If a bear is rampaging around your campsite do you think you have to "take a stand"?
This isn't some sort of status game. Well, maybe it is for Trump, but not for anyone who's not an idiot. Unfortunately, Carney is an idiot, and is in it for himself and his friends, not Canada.
The way to deal with the bear to the south is to first get rid of all the stupid stuff that is bad for Canadians regardless of Trump, like provincial liquor monopolies and dairy supply management. Don't ask for anything in return - Trump's word is no good anyway - but it may help with public opinion in the US. It will also help with better trade relations with other countries. After getting these other countries to open up as much as they're inclined, unilaterally eliminate tariffs on all countries (including the US). It's what's best for Canadians, apart from a few who profit off the lack of competition from other countries.
For bonus points, get rid of sales taxes, so there is zero friction importing things to Canada. That's great for consumers, and also great for any business that wants to continue or establish itself in Canada.
I don't understand your point about public opinion in the US. Public opinion here is already strongly against Trump and his foolish tariff policy. Most people here do not want to see Canada acquiesce to "the bear". It only prolongs the madness.
Public opinion is not a binary. It could certainly move further against Trump, and just as significantly, it could move in the direction of free trade, whose opponents include plenty of people other than Trump.
What's madness is continuing policies that antagonize other countries, and which are bad for Canada, just to make yourself feel better about having "elbows up".
That is not why the Carney administration made this choice. You are more focused on the immediate term situation, whereas they are more focused on the future steady state. They are taking an immediate term hit, with the belief that it will lead to a better steady state later.
The future is unknowable, so that might be the wrong bet. But in my view, it is the right one, in no small part because the political situation is on their (that is, the Carney administration's) side. Political support is what determines the ability to withstand pain. In Canada there is currently far more solidarity with the administration's stance on standing up to US bullying than there is in the US for the Trump administration's (many) price-increasing policies.
If the political situation were reversed, this would probably be a bad idea for Canada! But it isn't, so it isn't.
Trump tries to betray Canadians here. When you make negotiations and then at the last second try to worsen the terms, you are not acting in good faith. This is a consistent theme with Trump: he wants to take advantage of you. This is a de-facto mafia system. The "art of the deal" is the mafia way. You can see this with Iran too - Trump negotiates, then attacks. Then fake-negotiates, attacks again (and loses anyway). The guy is a problem for the whole world.
That should read, Trump betrays Americans. The reality is that he is destroying American credibility on the international stage, which is going to have long term effects on their ability to make agreements with other countries in the future. Standing alone is not in the interest of any nation.
As for betraying Canadians, Trump is not responsible for representing Canadian interests. I wouldn't want him to either. (Speaking as a Canadian.)
Openly lying about one's position is a typical negotiating strategy available to parties and used by both parties in the Canada-USA trade negotiations. It doesn't need to be justified. My issue is the American threats of violent annexation. That is more indicative of a shakedown.
Negotiating with the Trump administration is completely pointless, and can even result in your own government buildings being bombed while negotiations are still going on.
The only argument bullies understand is being punched in the face.
I wish more countries wiuld have the courage of cutting off ties with the US.
Just at the right time when China is looking to expand its exports. People said that Trump was Putin's stooge, but he might have been Xi's.
I'm concerned that governments worldwide are finding tarrifs to be a popular (and exciting!) way to exorbitantly increase the size of governments and goverment coffers which are then used for populist aims. We need to re-educate people that tarrifs are bad.
People here in Canada have not been sitting still. It is a truely fantastic oportunity, it's almost like 10% of the US market was suddenly transported to another country for free, and all we have to do is fill it.
It is a good thing canadians are so nice. Dropping US alcohol is a tiny thing compared to some of the weapons canada might deploy. Look at all the back-and-forth deals in recent years and you will see an exemption for oil and potash. Think gas prices are high now? See what happens if canada starts shipping less crude. Think food prices are high? See what happens when there is no fertilizer because canada has restricted potash exports. And what will make Musk's head explode: canada is starting to allow cheap chinese EVs into north america. Canadians will be driving them around the US very soon.
> US mines produce roughly 500,000 metric tons of potash per year, only about 8 percent of the 5.9 million metric tons of apparent annual US consumption. The remaining demand is met through imports, producing a net import reliance of about 92 percent. Reflecting the high concentration of global potash production, most of that supply comes from Canada (79 percent), with smaller volumes from Russia (12 percent) and other producers (9 percent) including Israel.
The sentiment here is that nobody wants U.S. citizens to be negatively impacted by trade restrictions or tariffs. We are figuratively and, in many cases, literally friends and family. (Aside, even if our provincial governments allow southern booze back on shelves, it'll stay there.)
It would be decidedly un-Canadian to leverage electricity, potash, or other commodities necessary for survival in trade negotiations -- despite what Ford may suggest. We're nice, but we won't bow to bullies. Elbows up, eh!
> nobody wants U.S. citizens to be negatively impacted by trade restrictions or tariffs.
As much as it pains me to say it as an American, little will change unless US citizens are negatively impacted. Trump is losing power and support in the US precisely because people are becoming more aware that he's hurting them.
I see the same thing in Russia. It seems like there is no such thing as a civilian target because getting your opponents citizens to uprise and while yours to support you is the key strategy now.
Except i think the American heart and minds campaign in Vietnam was lip service to a campaign that was measured by body count, and dead non combatants can’t litigate their combat status, so McNamara was befuddled the USA was “winning” and losing every square inch where there were not American soldiers in force. That there was no equivalent to insurgent Viet Cong embedded in North Vietnam says everything.
I want them to be negatively impacted. Maybe a couple family members spoke publicly about what’s happening, and the rest remain silent or indifferent. My cousins are too busy with their multi million dollar AI roles to even see us non-millionaires as human.
It's a slow moving train wreck. I hope the consequences of these petulant actions scar the minds of voters for years to come. We're seeing the yield on treasuries creeping up, I think that's one of the consequences.
And what will make Musk's head explode: canada is starting to allow cheap chinese EVs into north america
Another Musk moment: most aluminum in the US comes from Canada. Most of Musk's vehicles are built with aluminum. These tariffs will directly increase Tesla manufacturing cost in the US, making them even less competitive.
There's a good opportunity to use that tariff money and subsidize critical exports to everywhere but USA. Europe gets cheaper minerals and Trump gets left begging China for scraps at insane prices.
If you want political gestures then impose heavy sanctions on Israel and declare that Latinos can get refugee status in Canada because of ICE. That would be an economic win too.
But the Canadian government wants to be the 51st state. They have rapidly defunded social services, expanded fossil fuels and will adopt US style militarization. In fact, purchasing those munitions from the only country that has threatened to take it over.
This is so cute, won't bother the US in the slightest, and will be backed down from instantly. It could literally be within days.
Tariffs are the only good thing that Trump has tried to do - really driven by Bessant, the only competent person in the administration.
He's had to react to "Trump's" bizarre decisionmaking, which is really the sum of Israel's and random lobbyist's desires, which has completely thrown off his vision, but "free trade" is bullshit, only benefits big business and the market, only in the short term, and everyone always knew this. It is absolute exploitation of poverty and authoritarian regimes around the world, and ends up in US margins, not in US working people's pockets. Bessant doesn't give a shit about working people, but he gives a shit about shifting the failing US from short-termism into long-termism - and you can't do that when your population is borrowing to buy imports and not working. You are forced into using your military for conquest in order to protect your own supply chains, and your military has been corroded by the same corruption as the rest of your economy, you pay 10x as much for everything, so there was never any need for them to increase production capacity.
The anti-tariff libs are like "it's really taxes!" No shit, Sherlock. Remember when Grover Norquist wasn't the spirit of progressivism? Remember those protest movements that you hollowly ape the language of while openly opposing the policies of - the anti-globalization, anti-free trade movements? Remember how every single thing they predicted came true?
Tariffs are a tax on foreign exploitation and supply chain insecurity. We need to bring that exploitation back onshore. Cheap bullshit is of no benefit if you don't have a job.
Don't be fooled by elites in upper-middle class jobs furiously trying to ban anything that would lower their own incomes for a second - those are the same people who were telling you to learn how to code when your parents got laid off. They're the YIMBY gentrifiers of your neighborhoods. They've got hundreds of thousands or millions of $ in the market and in housing, and it's doubled and tripled while you moved back in with your parents, who can't afford their medication. When housing prices drop, they get mad. Housing prices are dropping right now, and they're getting mad.
Completely unproductive financialized ways of making money are disappearing. They've bet the farm to the tune of trillions on hundreds of giant factories dedicated to word association. If you're a desperate poor person who has made meme-y financial decisions, please sell your bitcoins and your pokemon cards. I'm not even sure if precious metals can save you. You need production to move back onshore. You probably need immigrants gone, because you might have to learn how to pick fruit if you want to be able to eat it - it's the most productive thing the US does.
Also, don't be fooled that there's some sort of economic consensus about how unwise tariffs are because you're online. Most of the people participating in that conversation are foreign elites who sell their own populations to the US for an extraordinarily luxurious living, send their kids here to go to school (and write articles about how that's somehow good for you) drive up your rents, and call you a racist for objecting - when they were literally propelled here on a cushion built by and on the slave classes of their home states. Tariffs are meant to transfer their (the few) success to you (the many) - so you can buy.
They're compradors, and they're propagandizing you for their own benefit.
After the US completely falls, and we're at 90% poverty, 9% comprador, and 1% plutocrat, they'll bring back manufacturing and sell your poverty to the flourishing Chinese middle class - a country that doesn't let the wealthy and foreign interests control its policy.
People here in Canada have not been sitting still. It is a truely fantastic oportunity, it's almost like 10% of the US market was suddenly transported to another country for free, and all we have to do is fill it.
Canada and EU tightening their relation, pretty sure there are a lot agreements in the making. Will be great for both and appreciated by the people living in EU (and surely Canada as well).
A lot of it has been half-hearted. Basically "wait out this loser and everything will go back to the way it was". A lot of Americans are leaning on this as well.
Like over the last year we (Canada) should have utterly obliterated the US from any element of the Canadian supply chain. Instead everyone just keeps expecting things to return to normal so no one makes the necessary investments to stop it at the border.
Americans voted for Trump, a child-rapist stunningly stupid criminal, twice. It should never return to the way it was.
In 2016, an anonymous woman filed a federal lawsuit alleging that he raped her in 1994 when she was 13 years old. The lawsuit was voluntarily withdrawn that same year, before the allegations were adjudicated. No court found that he committed the alleged assault.
I guess just ignore some certain files not fully being released, his name being purged for them and all that drama. But hey, let's keep this discussion on topic, this guy is the commerce secretary and was directly involved in tanking the trade talks:
Sounds like the right move. I can only hope that the rest of us lap dogs see the (common) sense.
The USA is increasingly the source of economic and military destabliisation in the world and it's getting real hard to justify being the best little doggy for them.
I'm not suggesting any action more drastic than calling a shit deal shit, and frankly it's pathetic and embarrassing that this is such a rare occurence.
And yeah, maybe some miracle corrective action will begin with a new president but the thing is, that will necessarily include restoring our "special relationship". You're better off refusing a bad deal outright, rather than trying to reneg later.
now imagine the next level of his destructive crime-spree August 2027
because this is nothing compared to when he starts to feel his loss of power
btw there are reports he's going to use ICE to do actions NEXT to voting centers to get around "no armed agents in voting centers" to force the voting to shutdown
electrocution gloves and all
we're in the US authoritarian era, Supreme Court and Congress let it happen and now there's no undo button
If the democrats don't manage to control both houses on the midterms and IMMEDIATELLY start the impeachment procedure against trump, I will start selling my portfolio and buying gold as fast as I can.
If Trump and his cabal is left unchecked we will be running fast towards something that will make 1929 like child's play.
At some point , looking at all the damage, it becomes hard to dismiss Trump as merely unintelligent and incapable. The other possibility is that the destruction deliberate, and the goal to end US hegemony. Would things proceed any differently if it were?
Much of the self-destruction flowed from the pages of Project 2025. You can't just blame Trump: you have to include the Heritage Foundation and the entire Republican party.
This is not a problem that goes away when Trump ultimately leaves office.
I'm willing to give his base some benefit of the doubt, given how heavily propagandized they are via Fox News, OAN, Newsmax, Sinclair Broadcast Group, etc.
On the campaign trail, Trump disavowed any connection to Project 2025 when it was leaked, and I suspect most of his base took him at his word. To anyone not trapped inside the right-wing media bubble, that is somewhere between naive and insane, of course, but people inside the bubble don't live in the same reality as the rest of us.
However, your response does remind me of an important point: two other rather large, looming threats which need addressing are media consolidation and money in politics.
I think Trump is severely misreading his position in the world. It's not April 2025 anymore. There will be consequences for everyone, but I am not sure his own party will support him through this in an election year. Especially now as the last time he publicly stated he backed down because if rising bond yields, which is actually happening already before any trade war. Is he really going to start another one, already in deep trouble because of the mess he made in Iran.
I think he will cave pretty quickly and Canada knows it.
I think they'll support him through the election. If the election goes as bad as it seems likely to, that might upset the apple cart. But it's also possible that it won't, and the Republican party will just be an empty discredited husk when Trump leaves the stage a couple years later.
The leaks surrounding the deal that was on the table earlier this week did not look promising. e.g. Locking in 15% tariff's on autos made in Canada would have resulted in slow death for the Canadian auto sector, not to mention hamstringing all of NA at a time when their only way to compete with Chinese auto makers is crushing tariffs or outright import bans. Something probably had to move here to get the deal done. Unbelievably, things went in the opposite direction.
Howard Lutnick strolled into the Whitehouse at the eleventh hour and told Trump he thought that they could get an even better deal with Canada than what was on the table[1]. Americans should probably remember this guy. His family runs Cantor Fitzgerald, who has been buying up rights to tariff refunds[2]. Companies hit by tariffs can gamble on them eventually being declared illegal, or they can sell the rights to their refunds for a smaller amount and have some degree of certainty. When tariffs are struck down in court, companies like Cantor Fitzgerald make serious bank. So, here Lutnick is again, whispering in Trump's ear, drumming up more business for his family.
Trump tends to listen to the last person who talked to him, whether it's an economist (This is unlikely, as Trump prefers not to talk to academics) or a bell hop. In this case, Lutnick got in last, Trump decided to move the goal-posts, the talks failed as a result, and now there are more tariffs that will probably be struck down by courts.
Meanwhile, in Canada, people actually seem to be happy that this deal failed. Carney has made multiple concessions over the last year and change while the U.S. has made none and just kept demanding more and more. The general sentiment was that it's time to get tough, even if that means tariffs. Reports are that the latest demands during these talks were for limits on Canada's ability to strike trade deals with other countries, exclusive U.S. access to Canadian critical minerals, and even meddling in Canada's French language laws. Any one of these things would have been seen as a deal-breaker during normal times. With the mood being what it was, they were unthinkable. The American contingent knew this, so we can only conclude they deliberately scuttled the deal.
Interestingly enough, Carney seems to have taken a page out of Trump's book by delaying retaliation until Sept. 8th, giving the Americans a deadline for a change. That leaves room for a couple of TACO Tuesdays. However, the messaging from the PM and premiers has been careful to point out that they are ready to hunker down and wait for Trump to leave office. Carney has solid support for this stance while Trump does not, even among republicans, plus the midterms are looming. Trump increasingly looks like the one without the cards.
It is more than time for Canada to learn the lesson that Navajos, Comanches, Apache and Cherokees learned too late: Americans lie, cheat, betray and steal. We shouldn't be cozy with them.
Question for Americans: do you guys understand what's happening?
The thing to keep in mind is that the current trade agreement was negotiated and signed by Trump himself. He has spent the last 18 months seeing what a terrible deal it is. He does not want a "deal" into conventional sense, that is an agreement that works for both parties. He needs the counterparty to be humiliated and subjugated. CUSMA (the current agreement he promoted and signed) is bad because it works for all parties, it does not subjugate and humiliate the counterparties.
What happened in these particular trade negotiations? Is that the actual negotiators had something worked out earlier in the week, then at the last minute the US made some new demand that was meant to humiliate Canada, and this tanked the negotiations. What exactly did they ask for? It's irrelevant, the point was humiliation.
Actual trade policy, whether you want access to Canadian dairy market, or lumber tarrif rates or whatever, none of that matters.
Is this a common understanding down south?
Edit: after I wrote the above, it came out that the thing they demanded last minute is restricting Canada's ability to trade with other countries. Obviously, no PM would agree to such a thing, it's purpose isn't to have a deal, but as I said, subjugation and humiliation. https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/livestory/us-canada-trade-war-...
As an American, there is a lot of disinformation in the U.S. A lot of people absorb MAGA talking points. The rest of us are in a continuous state of stunned disbelief.
Trump tore down a third of the White House without permission, and somehow it doesn't set off alarm bells. He's supposed to be a steward of the government for 4 years, not a king.
Under Trump, the us governments signature might as well be in pencil. This is America’s high water mark. It has lost the trust of the world. And since OpenAI and Anthropic and NVIDIA are the bulk of the hope of the American economy… America is fucked.
Canada walking away from American Bullying will go down in history of the moment the empire’s descent accelerated.
Importantly Canada has committed to matching every American tariff dollar for dollar, which the US already considers unfathomable. Greer repeatedly cites that only Canada and China retaliated, which is such a weird criticism. Is he intending to compliment us?
So expect Trump to start spiralling. Also expect lots of astroturfing about how desperate Canada is and that it has no choice (one of those hilarious slop purveyors appeared below).
Canada should begin the process of withdrawing from USMCA, and the truth is that NAFTA cum USMCA has worsened Canada's lot over the past four decades compared to peers. Trade agreements with the US are worthless, and even negotiating with that Epstein pedo cabal of grifters is useless. It sounds like the Canadian team were foolishly going to give in to many things (any concession of any form always comes back to hurt you), but at the last minute Howard "Epstein Island" Nutlick swooped in and tried to extract even more, undoing it all. Which...thank you Nutlick, you disgusting greaseball. You did us a great favour.
Please have a look at the actual flow of trade between CAD and USA, and its components. The impact is nothing like what you suggest for the US. Canada can bend the knee to Trump, or it must gut its policies on natural resources and become an extractive economy similar to Russia pre-Ukraine war. There's no other option for Canadians and time is not on their side.
The direct impact of the Canadian economy on the US one is small, but thankfully for Canada the broader economic reality is that the US isn't picking a fight just with Canada. America is creating a lot of messes for itself around the world. The effects of any Canadian retaliation will not be felt in isolation.
Carney internally is playing to a domestic crowd that is actually more hardline on US trade policy than he has projected.
The issue with "bending the knee" so to speak is that the hardship is just as bad as the no deal situation, except with the worse outcome that Canada's future prospects for diversification are diminished.
There is hardship down both paths for Canada, but only one of those paths has a long-term future.
You're right that it likely involves a heavier investment in our own resource extraction, but that seems to be precisely what Carney is moving towards.
As for the amusing side-quip about Russia, chances are Canadians will likely look to emulate some other resource-extractive based economies, like the nordics. The issue is less the extraction and more how the wealth from that extraction gets hoarded. And there too, it would manifest as the need to move away from the American/Russian model of a small set of simple-minded, deranged oligarchs siphoning all the wealth in the economy towards themselves.
Ya know, there's not a damned thing I can do about any of this, other than TRY to get citizenship elsewhere and leave this shithole.
And fascism is taking hold lots of other places as well. Canada's a laugh, with Alberta seperatism. And they also had trump trucker caravans.
EU? They're boiling in their own juices with the fact they now need air conditioning due to climate devastation... And many countries make it illegal without health reasons.
Japan and SK are both doing very poorly. China has some of the harshest immigration.
South America is still being fucked with by the CIA and destabilization idiocy.
I understand the tune-out check-out hippie response. There's fuck-all I can do, other than watch.
Id like to suggest that you rethink your opinion on the trucker caravan protest.
It is a reasonable position to frame them as opposing authoritarian government policies and for the governments response to be overreach.
The popularity of the trucker protest made and makes sense. Big anti government movements like that attract all sorts of bad actors and the media and government worked to highlight the worst aspects of that protest.
Mentally reducing the trucker protest to "thus Canada is bad" makes you seem like the type of black and white American fool that has created the political environment in the USA.
> It is a reasonable position to frame them as opposing authoritarian government policies and for the governments response to be overreach.
Well that's a big coded pile of bullshit.
What polices are "overreach"? By what standards? What authoritarian rules are being protested?
Oh that's right. It's all anti-vaxxer and 'cure yourself of Covid with bleach and ivermectin' bullshittery.
I have absolutely no fucking sympathy for a bunch of covidiots. Doubly so, since these chuckle fucks were ALSO pro-Trumpers.
> black and white American fool that has created the political environment in the USA.
And it's hilarious that you wouldn't touch the Alberta seperatism/fascist movement happening right now. You all like to pretend your shit doesn't stink... And well, I smelled it during wildfire season. Turn my sky yellow orange.
But all of this is spoken like a Republican riling shit up on Facebook.
Calm down. This aggressive response to having your ideas challenged is exactly the type of thinking you resent in your political opponents.
> Trucker protest is _all_ pro trump anti vaxxer / ivermectin
This is black and white "us vs them" thinking. This is fundamentally false and your inability to parse truth out of your political opponents positions will make your positions meet more resistance, ultimately you personally less influential and less useful to your team. Perhaps even net negative.
> Wouldn't touch the Alberta separatism
I am from Alberta. Alberta separatism is far less relevant or popular than the media makes it out to be. Im not sure how to make sense of the difference between CBC's reporting and my lived experience on the ground in Alberta, but everyone around me here is pro Canada and against separating. Even the rural conservatives. I have literally never met someone who actually wants to separate from Canada.
"Our existing free trade deals already provide Canada with preferential access to 1.5 billion consumers, and we are on track to double that market access by the end of this year."
the amount of mental gymnastics needed to believe this is off the charts.
Sure, it would be pretty easy to smuggle small, high-value items, but most of the trade volume is in large items like lumber, steel/aluminum, new vehicles, and potash, and it's pretty hard to sneak a dozen 18-wheelers across the border a day. Electricity and oil are also pretty common exports, but those are even harder to smuggle since they go across in fixed wires/pipelines.
I have not been following the Canada thing but generally have been learning more about trade and Trump's approach seems less chaotic and random than is talked about.
US's largest trading partner is Mexico. The biggest thing we import from them is automobiles & auto-parts and the second largest is computers and electronics.
We all understand the benefits of trade is meant to bring in - such as goods manufactured by countries whose prowess making those goods better to the benefit of all.
So it's interesting to look at this example. Automobiles - does Mexico have a prowess in that segment? A tell tale sign of "no" is that Mexico has no domestic auto brand. In other words 100% of auto exports from Mexico is actually US automaker production that shifted to Mexico is persuit of cheaper labor, weaker unions, and less environmental and other regulations that gets in the way of manufacturing.
I am focusing on this example because it's the largest segment of our trade with our largest partner - literally the biggest thing the US imports is our own shifted auto production.
The second largest segment is also interesting. Mexico isn't known for its computer and electronics brands either. What's going on? Turns out that Asian manufacturers (eg Lenovo) do the very final assembly in Mexico but all the components come from Asia. It's not actually "efficient" to do this except that when assembly happens in Mexico those components magically become a "north American good" by NAFTA terms and can go all over US and Canada with no duties or tarrifs or restrictions.
So the second largest segment with our largest trading partner is Asian manufacturers exploiting a NAFTA loophole.
As an American who inherently is pro trade (I am an MBA...) this is revealing about the obvious disadvantages of how trade has been configured. The auto example is literally NAFTA being used to bypass American labor laws and environmental regulations while maintaining access to our market by American companies themselves. The electronics example is Asian companies bypassing the long standing trade conditions by whitewashing Asian products as north American goods.
It is obvious that trade pre-Trump was not set up in a smart way from American perspective. The auto is a great example: the government simultaneously made it very hard and expensive to manufacture at home, and very easy to shift to Mexico.
I don't know the details with Canada as much but I no longer assume things were working great and US is meddling lens by default.
Canada doesn't have domestic auto companies, yet we manufacture auto parts and assemble automobiles destined for the US. From my understanding, this was negotiated as part of the trade deals. There is no good reason for them to desire cheap Canadian labour, weak Canadian unions, or weak Canadian environmental regulations. For one thing, Canada is known for none of those things. On the other hand, Canada had a lot of things the US wanted: access to the Canadian market and access to Canadian resources. I wouldn't be surprised if something similar happened when trade deals were manufactured with Mexico. While Mexico isn't on the same economic tier as the US, it isn't a third world nation that people like to paint it as.
As for companies looking for loopholes, it may be fun to blame it on Asian manufacturers. I would suggest that Americans take a good long look in the mirror. US companies were outsourcing assembly to Mexico long before Mexico came under the NAFTA umbrella. Quite often, at least with electronics, those US companies were using parts manufactured in Asia. Should Asian companies hold themselves back, should they avoid using the same practices as their American counterparts, just because it isn't fair to Americans? If anything, they have less reason to because Asian countries are responsible to their own citizens, not to Americans.
Your comment sounds like you are arguing with me but you are actually agreeing.
I am not "Blaming Mexico" - I am pointing out that the policy as I described it made no sense from American perspective. You are right that the American manufacturs did assembly in Mexico (form Asian components) before as well but it's the same point - an essential Asian good masquerading and benefiting from being a "north American one"
I think it is a bit more complex than that, since how Asian those goods were varied a lot across time.
Early on, it may have included semiconductors designed in the US, with manufacturing outsourced to Asia. That outsourcing may have been to a facility owned by an American company or to a foreign owned company. Then the semiconductors may have been shipped to Mexico where another company was manufacturing consumer products. Under such circumstances, can such a product be described as essentially Asian?
Of course, things changed. Asian companies took more control over product development and manufacturing. When they ran into labour and regulation making manufacturing in their own country more expensive, perhaps due to tariffs or perhaps due to their own citizens demanding better, they used the same playbook.
You're right in that it made no sense from an American perspective, but that isn't because it suddenly became cheaper to manufacture in the US. It did not make sense because they lost control of the playbook, because others could do it better.
On the whole, I agree with your point about trade being used to bypass labour laws and environmental regulations. I'll be more blunt with how I phrase it: the practice is exploitative and causes more harm than good. That said, the current American response appears to be driven by the demand for trade on their terms exclusively. Never mind that other countries may want something in exchange for their resources.
> I have not been following the Canada thing but generally have been learning more about trade and Trump's approach seems less chaotic and random than is talked about.
Trump imposed tariffs on an island populated only by penguins.
But this was the neoliberal globalist agenda for the past thirty years. Lower trade barriers, export manufacturing to low wage workers with poorer conditions. The result is lower automobile costs for American consumers at the expense of blue collar jobs evaporating.
There's a gap there. The reason automaking is expensive in the US is labor and environmental laws whose intent is to keep Americans employed at high wage and to keep the planet green.
So on one hand it's government regulation that makes us not compative. On the other hand the government doesn't ensure this happens by making it easy to bypass via mexico. So the end result is the environmental protections don't kick in and Americans don't make the high (or any) wages.
So we either drop those laws and open up trade, or we keep those laws and make it harder to bypass. Those are the two non-dumb options.
Canada should grow their population to 100-150 millions. this way it will have decent internal market and be more attractive to make trade deal with the rest of the world. Instead it relies on the US which appears to be very bad idea.
That's my view. The "Century Initiative" is being criticized for suggesting that Canada should reach 100 million by 2100. But you'd never believe it, the criticism is that this is too many people, and not many people criticise this "Iniative" as having an unambitious goal.
The criticism of the Century Initiative is that the extra 60-80 million are going to come largely from countries like India at rates that destablize Canada while further entrenching the kind of inequality that we've seen grow over the past 15 years.
The British did this to almost 20 different colonies, with the same people groups for the same reasons.
Century Initiative obviously doesn't specify from which countries, it merely mentions skilled immigration as its primary source of growth.
However if you take a step back and wish to argue in good faith, and look at where people did come from when Trudeau decided to open the flood gates 10 years ago, you'll find that India represents roughly 40% of immigrants. I'd say that can be described as "largely", and there is no reason to believe that opening the gates even wider would change those proportions.
Everything the current US administration has done has been an unmitigated disaster. Tariffs are taxes. Manufacturing is still declining, not returning and a man who could not run casinos successfully is not going to change that. His economic and foreign policy are dictated entirely based on who flatters him the most. Add to that continued environmental damage, domestic policy dictated by a regressive religious minority and a lack of interest in performing the duties of the position in favor of caring about only what it can be leveraged for. A failing state operating on grievances and stupidity.
I get that statistics can be manipulated but...
https://www.ismworld.org/supply-management-news-and-reports/...
> Economic activity in the manufacturing sector expanded in July for the seventh consecutive month, say the nation’s supply executives in the latest ISM® Manufacturing PMI® Report.
> The report was issued today by Susan Spence, MBA, Chair of the Institute for Supply Management® (ISM®) Manufacturing Business Survey Committee.
> “The Manufacturing PMI® registered 55.6 percent in July, 2.3 percentage points above the June figure and the highest reading since May 2022 (55.9 percent). The overall economy continued in expansion for the 21st month in a row.
PMI is a sentiment survey of 400 manufacturing executives. Vibes only.
ironic given top comment on this thread is pure vibes. interesting you chose to repond with this "vibes" comment to this instead.
While the top comment is pretty vibey, it's not presenting itself as firm statistics.
Manufacturing has never really declined in US, not in absolute terms.
It's simply facing the same fate of agriculture: automation.
Politicians want to sell to people they can bring back manufacturing jobs, but it's not like in china they making cars or batteries or chips by hand. It's all automated everywhere.
Every founder I know in manufacturing is thankful for this admin. There is a ton of invested interest in not having tariffs or a pro-manufacturing industrial policy as a lot of people got rich shipping it overseas. For some reason this is all ignored because the president is a very unpopular person (for obvious reasons)
What are they manufacturing? It must not involve any metal. Due to the tariffs on metals manufacturing costs have increased significantly for anyone using them.
It must not involve electrical components either, or any of the other inputs the US cannot produce at the scale or price-point of other countries.
As someone who grew up in a machine shop, still in manufacturing, and have my own hobby shop, its gross how much raw materials cost. I can get finished parts shipped from China cheaper then I can buy the raw material here in the US. I almost wept looking at over $500 for a simple 2x4 foot sheet of 1/2 inch thick 6061 aluminum.
Inconel is through the roof and I know a few aerospace clients who are MONTHS behind due to shortages and bonkers material costs. Like holding up the military supply chain which is ludicrous. This admin is brain dead.
Perhaps their founder contacts are in the ragebait and clickbait manufacturing business.
What’s your sample size? Unless it’s 30+ politically-neutral manufacturing founders, you’re citing anecdotal evidence.
why aren't these comments on top comment on this post saying this with no evidence "Manufacturing is still declining, not returning and a man "
What's your sample size?
> Every founder I know in manufacturing is thankful for this admin
Are they MAGA?
Then every founder you know has no idea how policy should be done. There’s a difference between having a pro manufacturing policy and applying tariffs and trade wars ad hoc based on how you feel slighted and giving no warning to any businesses nor having any sort of stability to your plans for any sort of appreciable time in the future. Also, the whole announced news on Friday changed it on the next week so that whoever is betting on the stock market can make some money also is not great for a pro manufacturing base. It’s all a grift and your buddies are dupes to believe in it.
Everybody I know in construction, especially larger scale, is losing their minds because nobody can bid on jobs without risking loosing their shirts. Tariffs could hit somewhere between the bid and the time the job starts and could increase material costs by 150-200% and could cause more delays. It's been like this for 2 years or so and they're losing their minds.
Tariffs have been hell for marina renovation work I'm associated with. Things paid for well in advance have exploded way past their budgets thanks to all the raw material costing so much more. Thanks to Trump.
Even the MAGA folks I have to deal with are bitter about it. They still voted for Trump but they can't deny the cause and effect. I think they'd still vote for Trump though. I don't understand how they manage to deal with the cognitive dissonance.
Some kind of "derangement syndrome "?
It's funny... laugh.
Really? I know people in the hardware space for whom the tariffs have been an unmitigated disaster. They had to go through a lot to not lose their customer base outside the US. I have seen many US-people with businesses swearing about that admin, especially the smaller ones.
Uh, I'm in manufacturing in the US and EU. Can confirm the tariffs are a total disaster. It's increasingly difficult and expensive to ship raw materials and components to the US!
"Just find US suppliers."
It's not that simple. There are a lot of things that simply aren't made in the US. (The majority of tool steels, all titanium alloys, everything made of tungsten, and I could go on all day.)
Besides, dealing with the Chinese is like life on easy mode. Handshake agreements are always respected. In most cases service and support are 24/7. Importantly for QoL, they never make you fill out a dozen forms, pay for a D&B report, "let's get on a Zoom call to touch base," and all of that nonsense. American B2B firms aren't really into customer service, as a general rule, I think.
Until that handshake deal isn't respected despite you doing everything right i.e. know supplier, know broker.
https://youtu.be/as2KoDtsS_0?is=3H1TVc2PZPbGLdPK
it's remarkable how much presentation can distort ppls judgment .. they'll actually admire narcissistic behaviour as long as its wrapped in a polished and presentable package (the ex PM of cananda) and yet label the less polished, ill mannered person with common sense as the narcissist ..
>His economic and foreign policy are dictated entirely based on who flatters him the most
Are you sure, it seems mostly based on illegal share trading. Murdering foreigners and sending soldiers to die is a lever Trump/his handlers keep pulling because they 'win' $millions every time.
One could call facilitators of his self-enrichment and abuse of office "flatterers".
Hope the voters remember this for the next couple election cycles.
I'm not sure how old you are, but shortly after Obama took office in 2009 there was quite a bit of reporting claiming that the Bush administration had been so disastrous and young people had been so thoroughly poisoned by Republican policies, that it would likely be a generation before the Republicans had the chance to win the presidency again. Remember, Bush left office in the depths of the Great Recession. Instead, it took less than 8 years for us to get MAGA.
They didn't in the last couple. Those elections went 49% vs 51%. I don't hold out a lot of hope for the next couple. They feign surprise, but it isn't like it was a mystery as to what he was going to do. He campaigned on everything he is doing.
The last few elections have been the most active in history, especially in 2020 essentially everyone voted.
Which should inform the credibility of anyone declaring one issue or another would definitely motivate voters to come out and vote for whatever policy they want to say is a winner: the last two elections, despite enormous new voter activation, the split in preference followed polling trends anyway.
The great fiction of American politics at this point seems to be the belief that the non-voting population are definitely an election margin who'll definitely come and vote for you provided you support <commentators preferred policy here>.
The vast majority of voters don’t ever understand why they’re being screwed by economic policies, they just know when they are.
And they’re too dumb to remember who caused the problems and just blame the other team no matter what.
This is difficult even for experts paying attention because economics is cyclical and policies can take time to show their effects
And blame the other side lol
They won't. I have industrial clients who are financially eating shit from all this and they have posters of Trump hanging on their office wall while extolling his antics. The workers think the same way. We're boned unless these morons wake up (they won't.)
The voters watch Fox. They will not see this.
They won't. Hope to be wrong though
Voters don’t go and actually look at the data themselves. They rely on pundits and the news to tell them the salient points.
The problem is that the media has essentially lost most of its usefulness as a bulwark against the most egregious excesses of crony capitalism and cozied up to it instead. It feels like the Gilded Age again, but the people are somehow more insufferable. Cramming the “light of human consciousness into the stars” apparently requires we create CSAM generating machines powered by nitrogen oxide belching gas turbines. Even the folks at non-profit news outlets like Pro Publica have leadership that refuses to understand that it is difficult to prevent AI errors at scale. Nobody reviews drafts with such detail, we make a lot of assumptions, we trust that the person/machine is not feeding us trash.
This is, of course, doesn’t even bring up the fact that a lot of people in the US now get their news—similar to folks in India via WhatsApp (that became such a problem that Meta was forced to curtail the number of forwards you could do in the app)—by passing trash, hate fueling articles around on social media.
In essence we took the grand market place of ideas, and then let it get completely owned by a few firms.
The media, where it isn’t outright compromised, is dying to survive on any revenue stream. local news outlets which are the backbone of solving actual Issues for citizen are not profitable and dying.
We have platforms, which instead incentivize for the largest viewer count, so local content is sacrificed at the altar of the zeitgeist.
"But...but...but what about gender equity in high-school sports?" - Voters
Social issues are just as important to voters as the economy and attacking them for caring about this issue, one that very clearly the people have asserted their opinion on, is dumb. If dems would stop dying in the hill of unpopular social policies they’d be winning more elections.
It's Republicans who are dying on the hill of unpopular policies. Nobody cares about men in womens sports to the point of dying from diarrhea or closing shop.
If dems would stop dying in the hill of unpopular social policies they’d be winning more elections.
I don't disagree, fundamentally, but the voters are prioritizing minor issues that affect one in a million people over major issues that affect everyone. That's not good judgement, it's stupidity. It's why wedge issues work so well.
I don't think it's helpful to suggest that "both sides" are equal in American politics, but I do think you have to be a least a little understanding that the democrats aren't an attractive alternative to most Americans. I'm afraid a pretty large minority of Americans have landed in the lose-lose position of "if i can't make it better, i might as well make it worse faster".
My Bangladeshi immigrant mom and her sister are complaining on Facebook that they were "good Democrats" until "Obama, AOC, and Bernie" brought their "radicalism." Democrats wave away this stuff as "performative," but people feel it viscerally and it subdivides and splits the coalition.
Most people don't vote based on policies and data. They are naturally skeptical about whether your five-point plans are actually going to have the intended effect. Instead, they vote based on their assessment of your judgment and whether you broadly share their ideas about what "good" and "bad" are.
Anyone who says Obama, of all people, was radical clearly listens to too much Fox News and conservative talk radio (which is an entirely different problem).
The only way Obama was objectively radical as a politician and president was the color of his skin.
My mom watches CNN and liked Obama as President. But my parsing of her comment—I haven’t talked to her about it, just saw it pop up when my aunt responded “me too, sister”—is that she views Obama as the patriarch so the buck stops with him to police the party messaging.
This is maybe an odd view for an American but it makes sense within a Bangladeshi social context. And democrats are the ones who chose to cultivate an electoral map based on immigrants like my mom in states like Virginia and Michigan.
> Obama as the patriarch so the buck stops with him to police the party messaging.
Sanders is not a member of the party. AOC didn't run for office until Obama had been retired a few years.
I get that you are trying to state facts but to the average person they are all Democrats so it don't matter.
Educate her.
> they vote based on their assessment of your judgment and whether you broadly share their ideas about what "good" and "bad" are.
You can't really simplify it to such a degree. I believe humans are creatures of action. We like it when things happen. Sometimes, not all the time but sometimes, our morals are downstream of that desire to "be effective". We will align ourselves, no matter the violence we have to do to our own senses, with what is useful.
Specifically, their willingness to skeptically engage with your five-point plan demands that you're actually able to execute it. If you categorically can't make anything happen, then people will cling to an explanation and a morality that can. American democracy has been at a standstill for upwards of 30 years, If the American people have to believe that all their politicians are pedophiles to get some sort of movement again. Then that's what they are going to believe.
According to polls democrats are the worse side, they are the most unpopular party maybe in history and are at an extreme low in terms of their approval rating. Trump is almost 20% more popular than the Democratic Party and they are polling below AI and ICE, they are right around the same approval rating with the American people as Iran.
And still they refuse to back down on a number of policies that have been proven to be extremely unpopular.
Part of that is because progressives also hate the Democrats for being hypocritical and/or ineffective. Doesn't mean they're going to vote for an R, though.
Not based on the special election results the past year, and primary turnout along with gains in polling numbers of Democrats compared to their Republican counterparts. Just look at Texas, Maine, Ohio, North Carolina, Alaska, Iowa, even Kansas. Bunch of red seats in play.
Your comment is spot on. Don't know why you're being junked.
-Independent..
You're funny
This is where the democrats need to smarten up. They should be hammering “tax and spend” Trump, 24x7.
The baseline Republican base doesn’t give a shit about the more extreme racist stuff, they don’t care about women being raped, etc they tolerate it. But they hate paying taxes above all else.
Trump closed the stretch IRA loophole in 45, and implemented the largest tax increase in recent history with the tariff regime. Only the really rich people and real estate folks get the big tax breaks.
If someone asks Chuck Schumer what the weather is like, he should say: “It’s a good summer day, but it would be a great one if tax and spend Trump released the Epstein files”
I'd argue more largely that the right is a loose coalition of people with differing goals...whether it's conservatism, lower taxes, anti immigration, religious right, etc. I'm reminded how my econ professor would say that hardened bootleggers and hardcore Christians would pretend to be friends just long enough to vote to keep alcohol illegal.
I feel like the Dems should have an easy time in the next elections if they don't fumble it given the current state of things. On the other hand, they seem to purity test each other in ways that make such a coalition harder to attain.
The current US right is a hodgepodge in terms of what they love, but for Trump's victories was unified by who they hate.
The Republican base doesn’t give a shit about “tax and spend” either. For all their hand-wringing about deficit spending, Republican administrations have for decades been the party of excessive spending and ballooning deficits.
They’ve demonstrated over and over that their core principles don’t actually exist, and are simply maxims that they have heard often enough that they blindly parrot them back.
Huh? Check out the Twitter feeds of your favorite Republican or Republican-aligned personalities. It's racial or nationalistic dog whistles all day every day.
The Democrats are not smartening up.
The weak kneed leadership will be getting replaced by the populist message of Trump but coming from the left, people like Mamdani, the DSA candidates, etc.
The people clearly want leaders who will say : we will use political tools to help the economic situation of the poor and middle class.
Everyone from Jon Ossoff to Angie Nixon has some version of this message and its resonating
DSA are democrats.
clearly they are smartening up
Smartening up in the sense of winning elections? Or serving their constituents?
Yes
They have been winning elections.
And (in Ossof and Mamdani’s cases) serving their constituents.
Trump and MAGA also won elections. My point is winning with a shitty plan is not smartening up, unless your only goal is winning the current election. The Republicans committed suicide, we saw it live.
DSA are not "democrats". DSA's agenda is socialism via the democratic process (vs. with a violent revolution, the way we typically get there). There is nothing between their agenda and principles and those of the traditional Democrats. The DSA wants to abolish the existing US democratic process.
Socialism (to contrast with social-democrats like some European nations which are primarily democracies, free markets, with a social component) is not a democracy those are opposing ideas.
> The DSA wants to abolish the existing US democratic process.
That reads as though you’re saying they want to abolish the democratic process, but as somebody living in a country with many of the democratic processes they’re proposing, looking in on what seems like a very dysfunctional democratic process in the US, it seems to be that they want to replace it with a much better version of itself.
You can't just go and change everything. There are always unexpected consequences.
The US process is far from ideal. I agree with that. I'm not American and looking from the outside there's a lot of head scratching I can do.
But- It's worked pretty well over the last few hundred years. You can't just take that and throw it in the garbage and replace it with some "workers will decide" socialist mumbo-jumbo.
Seriously. It doesn't work. You can't say let's take Germany's process and apply it in the US. It won't work. We should know better. There is a delicate balance of power (arguably already somewhat disrupted) and there is a culture and a history. That's why we also can't just bring "democracy" to non-democratic countries that easily.
The DSA are saying let's break everything and then figure it out. It won't work. We need responsible adults not revolutionaries to fix things with care.
> replace it with some "workers will decide" socialist mumbo-jumbo.
Isn't it clear to you that you're misrepresenting DSA's position?
This 100%.
I think most of us want a moderate Democrat. I hope populism dies with Trump/MAGA in the coming years. We don’t need to match them with our own distasteful populism.
How is DSA populist? The United States is a country famously opposed to socialist, I don't think they could've picked a more controversial position.
CHAZ was an idealistic symptom of applying John Lennon's Imagine to a neighborhood of Seattle, and it wasn't the only city tempted by this endeavor (if only it didn't finish with an arms dealer taking leadership of the locality);
"Defund the police" was a campaign slogan at last election.
I'm looking from Europe and I'm often impressed how extreme american leftists are. If it's not socialism, it sure shares the same conclusions. And yet "The most extreme left in the US is the most extreme right wing for Europe" is a common belief.
>I'm looking from Europe and I'm often impressed how extreme american leftists are.
I am often impressed how abusive and violent US policemen are. And they have budgets rivaling the defense spending of whole countries and are armed to the teeth with military grade equipment.
>But- It's worked pretty well over the last few hundred years.
Except form the million of black people living in the south of the US. For them, the USA is a democracy only since 1964.
And if you argue "yes but it got better", the Republicans are making everything to get back to before 1964.
Incidentally, your "we can't let workers decide" sounds a lot like "we can't let negroes vote" or "we can't let women vote". And is as much FUD.
Clearly a social component can exist within a democracy, European nations are an example of this? Are there any proposals more radical than European-adjacent style social policies?
As a citizen of one of the European countries you mentioned, let me tell you: The DSA would run as a center-left party in pretty much the entire union. You have—respectfully—not a clue what socialism means, because the DSA agenda has absolutely nothing in common with communism in the first place.
I disagree. When I moved from Finland to the US, I was surprised to find how popular actual "abolish private property" style socialism was among young Americans. I hanged out with leftist people when I was a student, and I kind of knew many of the people who eventually ended up running the Left Alliance (the main left-wing party). My impression was that they had all accepted free markets as a necessary evil, rather than advocating for the socialism of their predecessors. But it looks like Finnish students have started adopting American socialist ideas in the recent years.
Bernie is probably the most well-known democratic socialist in the US, but he is not a member of DSA. By his political positions he would be either in the left wing of Finnish Social Democratic Party or in the mainstream of the Left Alliance. He would probably choose the Left Alliance, since it is more like a coalition of like-minded activists, while the party is the primary actor for the Social Democrats.
AOC, another well-known democratic socialist, would also fit in the Left Alliance. She is part of the moderate wing of DSA. But if you start looking into the ideological wing, you find plenty of actual socialists who would make Finnish mainstream leftists uncomfortable.
Respectfully does the government run the grocery stores in your European country? Is public transit free in your European country? Do your center-left parties advocate for abolition of your parliament and democratic processes? Do they talk about how the rich are the source of all evil? Have you studied the DSA agenda in depth?
And sure, there are also ideas like healthcare for all which I think are similar but that isn't really what the DSA is about. It's definitely not about transforming the USA to have a better social network like healthcare or protection for employees. It's a lot more radical than that.
> Have you studied the DSA agenda in depth?
Yes, they are center-left at best, and your frenzied rebuttal against regular people trying to improve their lives and the country they live in is alarming. Free public transportation..the horror.
>> Have you studied the DSA agenda in depth?
> Yes
Respectfully, you may have skimmed some material or watched a couple of minutes of MSNOW, because you wouldn't come to the conclusion that the DSA just wants free public transportation otherwise. Key aspects of the DSA's goals and the actual policy implementation actions of elected DSA-aligned politicians that are quite well aligned with the position of a person holding communist and other relatively extremist sympathies:
- state-controlled grocery stores [0] - public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries [1] - abolition in full of police and prisons ("cut police budgets annually toward zero") [1] - ending sanctions on states backing terrorist activities [1] - permitting open, uncontrolled immigration [2] - disregarding the existence of Israel ("democratic secular state [Palestine], from the river to the sea") [3] - giving voting rights to noncitizens and prisoners [4]
[0] https://edc.nyc/program/nyc-groceries (a city headed by a DSA-aligned mayor) [1] https://program.dsausa.org/ [2] https://www.dsausa.org/democratic-left/using-power-builds-po... [3] https://www.dsausa.org/statements/on-the-ceasefire-in-gaza/ [4] https://program.dsausa.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/DSA_WD...
Did the person above you say that the DSA suggests that the states should run public grocery stores, and did you gloss over it, parodying him?
Wouldn't you recognize that bad faith characterizes the DSA lines?
Free public tenant is very common. The wealthy being massive sources of the problem is very common. The U.K., hardly a bastion of socialist views, has massive amounts of food banks and he only attempt to overturn democracy I’ve seen was on Jan 6th 2021.
> DSA's agenda is socialism via the democratic process, and
> The DSA wants to abolish the existing US democratic process.
So, getting into elected office by winning elections is wanting to abolish the democratic process?
I think I'm beginning to understand why the hardcore MAGA folks loves Trump so much.
>The DSA wants to abolish the existing US democratic process.
You misspelled "Trump".
There is only one party making it harder for people to vote, and it is the Republican party.
They are part of the democratic party so they are democrats.
As for their agenda, you are wrong.
I'm going to believe what they say:
https://www.dsausa.org/
"The Democratic Socialists of America is the largest socialist organization in the United States, with over 100,000 members and chapters in all 50 states. We believe that working people should run both the economy and society democratically to meet human needs, not to make profits for a few."
"Capitalism is a system designed by the owning class to exploit the rest of us for their own profit. We must replace it with democratic socialism, a system where ordinary people have a real voice in our workplaces, neighborhoods, and society."
"democratic socialism" is an oxymoron. socialism conflicts directly with democratic values. At the very least there is no pre-existing example of democracy and socialism working side by side. All previous socialist "experiments" were not democracies.
> "democratic socialism" is an oxymoron
No it's not, check out Europe, mostly northern countries, it's working just fine.
> At the very least there is no pre-existing example of democracy and socialism working side by side.
Again, northern europe screaming at you.
So you're wrong...
Also, you're Canadian, maybe it's not your business
I am also a Canadian, and since midnight we are in a big economic war with the USA.
I feeel those topics are a bit of my business.
Scandinavian countries you are referring to are practicing Social Democracy, they are not Democratic Socialist states.
In other words, Social Democrat != Democratic Socialist
Scandinavian model relies on competitive private enterprise to create wealth, combined with strong labor union collective bargaining, universal public services, and high consumption/income taxes that apply broadly across society.
DSA seeks to move past or dismantle the capitalist economic system, advocating for social, public, or worker ownership of the means of production.[1]
[1] https://www.dsausa.org/about-us/what-is-democratic-socialism...
No they do not and it doesn't say that anywhere in the linked website.
Why are you lieing?
From what i can read they want the same scandinavian model with strong labor unions, universal public services and so on.
"We want to collectively own the key economic drivers that dominate our lives, such as energy production and transportation."
From the linked website. Now, that's not quite "the means of production", explicitly stated. It's just "the key economic drivers", so most of the means of production.
Maybe you ought to be a little less quick to accuse others of lying.
"Democratic Socialism" is VERY different from "Social Democracy"
In socialism with supposed democracy, where the state owns the means of production and supposedly the workers supposedly have a say about everything, they actually end up with a say about nothing (at least not without greasing the right palms in the inevitably corrupt system that arises).
In Social Democracy, capitalism is the underlying system, where corporations and workers can own means of production, but it operates under sufficient regulation that the excesses and systemic failures of captialism (e.g., failure to prevent Tragedies Of The Commons, tendency towards monopoly and excess concentration of power, consistent tendency to abuse and impoverish workers, etc.), you end up with successful systems like Northern Europe.
The two are very different, and we need to hold the DSA people to the latter and not let them sneak in the former.
You are wrong.
The term you are looking for is communism, not socialism.
Nordic countries are practicing Democratic Socialism.
DSA is not communist.
Why are you spreading this crap when it takes 2 neurons and a few searches to find out you are wrong?
They themselves literally say out loud that they want to abolish our existing institutions. If you want to debate that point, go debate the DSA candidates themselves.
You're wrong again.
> he populist message of Trump but coming from the left, people like Mamdani, the DSA candidates, etc.
Leading but honest question: Are those candidates the same as Trump? I do not see how they share anything other than strategy and spin, and those things don't make policy.
The Democrats are part of the system.
I really don't want people to be left with the impresion that this is Democratic Party incompetence. It is not. They are complicit in pretty much everything the Trump administration has been doing. They know what works. Just do what Obama did in 2008 and run on a populist economic platform. They don't want to do that. It's a choice, not incompetence.
If Chuck Schumer is asked about the weather, he'll first check with Netanyahu.
Just look at what Senatorial campaigns Schumer supports and doesn't. There's a lot of suspicion that Schumer (and the DSCC) is going to leave Abdul El-Sayed out to dry because he's anti-Israel, basically. Mandela Barnes got similar treatment in 2022. And yet you have blockbuster challenges like Jaime Harrison's, which spent $130M to oust Lindsey Graham. He lost by 10. Trump won by 12 so I guess he gained 2? Well done, everybody, the system works.
Oh and what did the DNC do with Jaime Harrison after he spent $130M to lose by 10? They made him the DNC Chair. The Democratic Party loves a loser. Just like Howard Dean.
The vast majority of sitting Democratic senators voted against funding for Israel this year.
The DSCC funding is a drop in the bucket of the overall funding in these races, and they have their own goals which may or may not be aligned with the party as a whole.
If your single issue is Israel funding (which it probably shouldn’t be but that is your choice), the Democratic Party and presidents did far more to reign in Israel’s behavior than republicans.
I think parent's broader message was the Democratic party leadership being out of touch with potential Democratic voters.
Support for Israel's current government (elections in October 2026) being but one example.
You need to realize just how performative most votes in Congress are. The Democrats, for example, will vote for all sorts of progressive policies when they know they won't pass. For example, Kamala Harris was a co-sponsor on a Medicare for All Bill. She didn't run on that in 2024. What's the difference? Well if she won in 2024, she might have to deliver on it. In 2019, Trump was in the White House so there's zero chance it would pass.
Republicans do this too. Two of the seats they're at most risk of losing are Maine and Alaska held by Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski (respectively). They currently have 53 votes (well, 52 with Mitch McConnell MIA). That means they can pass things with 50 votes (and JD Vance's tie break) on anything that can get past or doesn't require cloture (eg approving judicial nominations, reconcilation). So, every time you have a controversial nomination or bill, you'll often find Collins and Murkowski vote no because their votes aren't needed. The leadership is insulating them from attack. But when their votes are needed, they're there (eg Collins's required vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh).
As for the number of Democratic senators who voted against weapons for Israel, it is significant because it never would've happened 5 years ago, but it's also mostly performative because there's no way it was going to pass.
As another example, Democrats did a rare move to invoke the filibuster last year to stop ICE funding. This resulted in a government shutdown and important programs being punitively defunded (eg there was a reserve fund for food stamps that was intentionally not tapped). What happened? The Republicans needed 60 votes to force a vote. There were 52 votes. 8 Democratic senators crossed the floor to vote with Republicans. That's so weird. It's the exact number required. What a coincidence. Whatever that number was, 1, 5, 8, 12, it doesn't matter. There will most of the time be that number of exact senators requried. This, by the way, is part of the rotating villain role within the Democratic Party.
This is how calculated it was. All 8 of those who crossed the floor were either retiring or they weren't up for re-election in 2026 so the voters couldn't punish them. John Ossoff, the current liberal darling, was going to be one of the 8 but he's facing re-election this year so Chuck Schumer whipped another vote to replace him.
Another classic example was the Epstein transparency act. Trump threatened members who signed the discharge petition. Mike Johnson actually shut down the House for 7 weeks to try and get those that did to change their vote. yet when the discharge petition got 218 votes (the minimum required), suddenly the votes in the House and Senate were almost unanimous. Well, if support was almost unanimous, why not just have a vote to begin with?
Mitch McConnell can really be credited with pioneering a new era of obstruction in the Senate. He realized there was a political cost to some votes. Some things were popular and he didn't want to pass them so he'd just make sure they never made it to the floor for a vote.
So my point is that imagine the Democrats control the House, the Senate and the White House in 2029 and that same Israel funding bill came up. Will all those Senators and House representatives vote for it when it might pass and become law? Nope.
> The baseline Republican base doesn’t give a shit about the more extreme racist stuff, they don’t care about women being raped, etc they tolerate it. But they hate paying taxes above all else.
Honestly wild opinions to have. Watch 30 seconds of fox news. A significant chunk of their coverage is about protecting women and children from migrants/pedos/trans people. They want a tough on crime executive branch almost as much as they want low taxes.
So either they care about the safety of women and children, or they want to have some brown skinned and "weird" people to heave their hate on. I know which possibility I think is most likely...
I recommend this short piece, "The Missing Mood"[0]. It describes the concept that the motive and behavior of someone as it relates to a proposed set of actions is important. e.g. Someone proposing war might be correct, but one hopes a war hawk laments the need to go to war, vs. celebrating it and being bloodthirsty.
Fox News ideology may at times declare opinions that, in complete isolation, might seem reasonable. "Border control", "safe streets", "responsible government" etc. But they approach it from a place of exaggeration and lies, and an outright visceral anger and hatred toward migrants, trans people, etc. They ignore other activities that might be troublesome. Such as ignoring GOP sex offenses, GOP bribery in the oval office, unconstitutional actions by their executive, or needless wars that cost half a trillion dollars and weaken the US' national security.
So I agree with your parent comment, that Fox News and many of its viewers pick and choose what to say they're angry about, either out of intellectual dishonesty or, in the case of the viewer, outright ignorance or deeper thought about the whole picture of the government and society right now.
[0] https://www.econlib.org/archives/2016/01/the_invisible_t.htm...
> Tariffs are taxes.
Taxes are good! China, which is run by some of the smartest technocrats in the world, has a very strong system for controlling the flow of foreign products into the country. Because of the nature of their government, they have more tools at their disposal than just tariffs, e.g., requiring foreign companies to establish joint-ventures with Chinese companies. But the purpose is the same.
> a man who could not run casinos successfully
Trump didn't invent tariffs. The political thread in favor of strong tariffs started with Alexander Hamilton: https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/spotlight-pr.... Strong tariffs were a core plank of the Lincoln GOP: https://www.abrahamlincolnsclassroom.org/abraham-lincoln-in-....
"Tariff" didn't become a naughty word until the Cato folks took over the GOP in the 1980s.
Tariff is a naughty word because of its proven negative side(main) effects.
Not all taxes are equal. Regressive ones suck.
Tariffs are a tax that buys you (at least) three things, all of which are difficult to quantify, and usually overlooked by economists:
1. Security. You make your own bullets. You're able to make and maintain your own military hardware. When another country cuts supply lines in their own self interest, you have options to advocate for yours, either through trade, making it yourself, or, yes, even force.
2. Economic opportunity for your children and grandchildren. And no, not just "factory jobs" as is commonly sneered, but a community of experience and expertise. An engineer that gets to interact with the products they design in that kind of environment is a better engineer. A country that gets to see and interact with the products it makes has a sense of pride and better social cohesion.
3. Social buy-in and consequences for companies. A Chinese car manufacturer doesn't give a shit if cutting costs killed your grandfather. A local company has to, because the executives and workers are all members of the community. I was in Germany during dieselgate, and the sense of disgust at the company was obvious. They felt that.
These things are, imo, important to the health of any country, but they can only really be valued in retrospect. So yeah, tariffs are a tax, but some things are worth paying for even if what's being purchased isn't necessarily obvious or easy to quantify.
Yes those are all good things. Tariffs aren't the only almost never the most sustainable long-term way to get them. I'm old enough to remember the protections against japanese cars, but I know they didn't solve the problems with US auto industry, for example.
It's not "proven." At the 10,000-foot view, the magical market theory folks implemented their ideas about free trade since Reagan. And who is happy with the result? Tariffs were a core policy of the United States from Alexander Hamilton through Lincoln to the early 20th century and, empirically, they worked pretty well!
Ok cool let's go back to then and cut the budget to match. Sounds like a decent tradeoff to me I guess. I would prefer a more incremental experiment though.
I'm not a free market fundamentalist. I also don't think we ever had a free market. Implementation details always matter. My standing policy is basically small informed perturbations around free trade, included targeted tariffs. Everything has tradeoffs. Restricting lumber from canada and fucking Americans? Not smart. Letting China openly steal from us? Asymmetric trade policies hurting the US? Also not smart.
Nobody likes free trade. Democrats can only get away with it because they are so much better on healthcare. They can cobble together a coalition of big businesses and service workers whose jobs can’t easily be shipped to China. But healthcare is carrying to whole weight of that compromise.
The trouble is that the US realized long ago that they could get free stuff by giving out imaginary paper (aka trade deficit) ad infinitum and, in turn, stopped doing much. China, on the other hand, doubled down on trying to do everything and now has the luxury of largely being able to ignore the rest of the world.
The US could theoretically start doing things again, but it is never clear how to make that happen. The people much prefer to get free stuff (who wouldn't!?). Even if you can convince them otherwise, a lot of the institutional knowledge required to do things is gone. As capital moves to where it is most economically useful, the 'free stuff' economic structure has shaped where the capital is found. To move to a 'do things' economy would require turning the capital allocation upside down. To have all the pieces fall into place to see all that align just right requires great upheaval.
Maybe tariffs really are trying to be the catalyst to convince the people that free stuff isn't the way to bring on the revolution, but even if that's the case, that's a different environment to how tariffs were used historically.
Tariffs are only regressive on the collection side. The redistribution side can be as progressive as you want, more than offsetting regressive collection if you wish.
I didn't say tariffs were necessarily regressive, my (poorly made) point was that renaming tariffs taxes doesn't really change the problem with them.
Edit- but I would be shocked if the net effect of Trump's tariffs weren't regressive.
Edit 2- " redistribution side can be as progressive as you want, more than offsetting regressive collection if you wish." That's an infinite money glitch if true. Tariffs increase input costs that effect many downstream things, in addition to their direct price effects.
And how many times did Alexander Hamilton apply tariffs to islands inhabited by penguins while specifically exempting Russia and Belarus?
> Taxes are good!
Add that to the list of things I thought I'd never hear a conservative say.
Say what you will about the man, but Trump's takeover of the mainstream conservertive movement has been thorough, and eerily cordyceps-like.
That's like saying Clinton mind-controlled a bunch of Dukakis voters into suddenly wanting to cut the size of government. It's an underlying political realignment and reshuffling of voters.
>> Add that to the list of things I thought I'd never hear a conservative say.
Rayiner is a bad-faith troll who thinks he is being clever by doing the whole “oh, I thought you wanted to raise taxes, liberal??” thing. He does not actually think taxes are good.
I love taxes! I'm grateful as an immigrant to be able to give back to the country by paying high taxes. Here is my 7 years ago saying you should raise taxes on me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20412077
"In Sweden, about 15% of people pay the highest marginal tax rate. If that was the case in the U.S., the top tax bracket would kick in above $120,000 household income. That makes total sense. These people are very well off and should be subsidizing the rest of the country."
Not absolutely everything. You can make a very strong negative claim without hyperbole, and be a more trusted source in the process.
As a non American, curious to know what has not been a disaster under Trump II specifically
Nuclear stuff. btw what's more probable - every single thing that has been done under this presidency is unambiguously negative, or it's mostly negative? It's so easy to just NOT take the most extreme stance, and almost certainly to like 10 9s more accurate. Yet I'm downvoted for it.
"regressive religious minority" yes, Israelis and the evangelicals that worship them.
Do people have no shame in attaching a minority group - who by the way by and away opposed Trump from a voting perspective - with ethnicity (the majority are secular) - and with a foreign government - Israel?
In any other normal sane world stuff would get called out, greyed out, and ultimately shot down. In THIS world, the responses (I bet, like this one) are the "greys."
It's a scary world we live in where the Left turns into the Right of the past.
Why didn't you have a problem with my criticism of evangelicals?
The world should've collectively recognised what Liberation Day was and responded together, in lock step, and in kind.
Instead, the Europeans caved, Japanese caved (PM resigned after doing so), Republic of Korea caved (PM resigned after doing so), India of course caved and so on, shattering any prospect of collective action which might pull the rogue hegemon back into line.
Now, the US is simply able to renege or renegotiate the bilateral deals whenever he feels like it, forcing the other party to face down the US by themselves - not many can do this, maybe only China. Anyways, I wish the Canadians well and I hope they gain global support
That not how politics works. It is much slower and hidden process. EU fast tracked Mercosur and other trade deals. China and Japan is slowly dumping US treasury bills, Canada is in open trade confrontation and is diversifying toward China. Everybody is shifting away from US weapons suppliers. Nobody is willing to help with Iran even on symbolic level.
You are both right. The world capitulates more than it should. But the world is also moving away and building contingencies.
The world needs leadership. And Canada is helping with that.
I do not think that reciprocal tariffs are actually the answer though. They hurt both sides and the US is not a rational enough actor to respond like you hope they will. The answer is in shifting trade away from the US and isolating their economy. It takes longer but it is what will work. And even if their behaviour does not change, their power will fade with their economy.
As a Canadian, my hope is that we can build stronger relations with Europe. I don't think anyone can avoid China but I would rather minimize those ties.
We can't afford to cut all ties with United States due to our geography and history, however it would be prudent for us to reduce our dependency.
I don't think majority of Canadians wish to see the nation in such a vulnerable position again with regards to US. Banking on a single player in terms of security and trade has proven to be a risky endeavor.
I have much love for the American people, but I support the actions of our government.
As a fellow Canadian. Our neighbor is the world's biggest economy. Despite their current "challenges" they are still very close to us in values and culture. Our paths are interlocked. We are not going to decouple from the USA and it's not in our interest to do so.
When a Canadian new grad is faced with an option of going to work in SV or in China which do they prefer? Between Chinese values and American values which do we prefer? A society with no freedom of speech? Where people are arbitrarily jailed if they voice an opinion against the government? Where the government places citizens in concentration and re-education camps and runs them over with tanks? I mean to me the choice is clear.
How many large American companies have offices in Canada? How many people and what slice of the economy does this support? Lots.
So yes, the US has drifted and is drifting from the ideal. And maybe it was never the ideal. But it's much closer to us than China in every imaginable facet and will likely remain so for the next many decades. We need to filter the noise out, definitely stand firmly for what we believe in, but also compromise and look at the longer term.
Europe is probably much closer in values.
Beyond that societies can change quickly. Germany, Japan, Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Peru, Chili, South Africa, every country in the USSR, and China too have changed values dramatically in short periods of time in the past 100 yrs.
Also, China is not putting out videos that say they will dominate any country in the Americas. I'd urge us to take people seriously when they say what they value: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V359k45CBY0
Between another statement you’ve made here (about how the Democratic Socialists of America want to abolish democracy) and this one, you don’t have much credibility. I am Canadian and would prefer we follow any path other than any you have espoused.
I am an American and I support the actions of your government as well. Capitulation never works against a bully--they will always come back for more.
But what tool do you use to shift trade away from the US to other countries? Tariffs are perhaps the most efficient mechanism.
Create and serve better products more efficiently while the US insists preserving unproductive jobs and banning progress is more important than growth and affordability.
Learn from what they did well and what they did poorly, copy the good parts.
regulatory alignment is an obvious one
there's plenty of barriers without tariffs holding up trade between blocks and countries.
That's happening. The rest of the world is moving away from the US as a trading partner. Trump is just too flaky to deal with. Canada now exports oil to China instead of the US, for example. The EU is moving towards self-sufficiency in financial services.
What the Trump Administration does not get is that the US is no longer central to the world economy. Everyone else has a lot more productive capacity now. Trump is running on a 1980s world view.
Exactly, the move away from the US is both fast and slow. Fast on the things that could be swapped for an alternative straight away/short term. Slow in that there are something that will take decades to move away from and are actively being worked on but quietly.
This is the problem of the 2nd Trump admin, the first time was considered a fluke incident and didn't pan out so bad as there was a lot of longer term folks keeping things sort of in check. The 2nd time, it was apparent that there is a significant enough faction of the US population that will ensure this kind of power structure keeps coming back. Trump is but the first of many to operate like he does. There will be more like him.
I must warn some people, who knows which side of politics that will come from. Don't think 'your side' is above it, this kind of rhetoric and rot and creep in a lot quicker than one would think.
The US is desperately selling currency so it can buy the Yen so that Japan doesn’t ditch its US treasuries.
Investing in your customer so they buy your product seems to be the signature move as of late.
*Nobody is willing to help with Iran even on symbolic level*
Most people do not realize how much of a shift that is.
In the past there was always a ton of EU countries helping the US out, in whatever crap the US started. And a lot of European soldiers died. Those soldiers did not help Europe but the US, because of being allies.
Even when some European countries got called names for not helping in Iraq because they called out that the whole Weapons Of Mass destruction was a load of bull** . It did not stop others from helping the US.
Yet, now, what we see as "help" is so minimal, and even countries like Spain not just refusing but active blocking. It shows how much relationships have deteriorated.
Trump thinks of Europa like a vassal state, and every time we say no or delay, it drives him nuts. Or our best "yes", if often a "well, we need to have agreement in all the countries, see you in a few years". Do not think its coincidence, its done deliberately.
In the past when the US said something, beyond maybe France, most countries quickly followed. This is gone ... We know the world has changed, and the old order is finished.
This ignores two facts.
One, US has been the largest buyer of imported goods. As much as people think turning away is difficult and needs planning.
Two, turning away requires time and planning. Supply chain isn't built in one day. People need time for that.
In the short term - like next 3-4 years - it is going to look like countries caved. But in the long term Liberation Day will be remembered as one of the days which put a nail into the American exceptionalism.
i think canada has found that its been less difficult than we thought it would be
ultimately the US is buying stuff, but its the stuff thats actually valuable and not the USD you get from it. its even easier to move when you cant even buy oil from the gulf anymore, whether in USD or otherwise.
the supply chain problem arrived in trump 1's covid disaster, and hasnt exactly been solved for getting stuff to the US again
"Now, the US is simply able to renege or renegotiate the bilateral deals whenever he feels like it, forcing the other party to face down the US by themselves"
This won't last. There are consequences for behavior on all scales. If you prove yourself untrustworthy and treacherous, people will treat you as such. International politics don't move very quickly, especially if coordination is required. But it will eventually move.
"Winning" at all costs has never ever been sustainable and I don't think see why this time will be different, especially with diminishing real power.
"They make it a desert and call it peace(winning)."
>> India of course caved and so on,
India and US still have not signed any trade deal. Not sure what's the basis of your comment.
India and China have their own trade books.
No one other than close US allies caved.
And even then, they all realize Trump is a mad man and cannot be relied upon.
Absolutely agree; but it's never too late to react. Europe could impose tariffs on US tech or forbid it altogether to bid on government contracts. Etc.
What are we waiting for.
Possibly waiting for a reasonable replacement for US tech. For example, if the US should decide to shut off MasterCard and VISA services to Europe, it would create non-trivial difficulties for the European banking system.
EU has started that with the Wero project.
https://wero-wallet.eu/
its also a one time trick for america, similar to the strait of hormuz
it would be so disruptive that europe would have to make and use an alternative, and then the US could not regain that market
Now imagine the costs for the oligarchs to let that not happen. 'Might makes right' also applies internally. When the rules don't apply you will see fiefdoms eating each other and white collar crime cranked up to the max. In these dynamics there is a reason to get from your clan a tsar in power who can guarantee some level of stability. If you see a lot of sycophancy displayed around the don you know why.
The banking system would probably be fine, only card payments would suffer but there are mostly already alternatives available.
Geopolitics to make sense.
tariffs on tech i think is harder than just not accepting US patents and IP, and refusing protections on it
the bilateral deals signed means we (the world, minus the US) is already divided. Got to scrap those deals first, which isn't going to happen. The shark has scattered the shoal and we're all going to get picked off - perpetually signing worse deals, then having to renegotiate again before signing ever worse terms.
Why does any country need a deal with the US? Canada is more integrated than anybody and they are walking away. Canada believes productive trade with the rest of the world is better than a bad deal with the US. China was prepared to do the same. The world should take notice.
Exactly. If Canada can do it, who can't??!?
If Trump can scrap bilateral deals, then others can too, using similar tactics if necessary.
Apparently all you have to do is impose a digital services tax and he'll rip it up for you.
That tax would make a lot of sense, actually.
> What are we waiting for.
Responsible governance around something like when and how to retaliate (if at all) against tariffs comes down to one of the most fundamental forces of economics and trade: real leverage. Whether or not the US should exercise its leverage to attain outsized and favorable terms on the economic stage is the peanut gallery conversation that happens on social media. The two worlds couldn't be farther apart. What will actually happen in the end is just a math equation that has never changed and will never change.
That's just not true. Geopolitics isn't maths, never has been, never will be. Maths is an input amongst many, and doesn't decide the outcome.
Honestly, if Trump keeps giving intelligence to Ukraine against Russia, then it was worth paying the (idiotic) tariffs.
That was the EUs top priority. The other issue was that each country had its own products they didn't want to lose sales from.
More generally, the EU isn't built for a world of presidential powers exercised at whom, which is becoming more of an issue this decade.
There some sense that the structure of the EU is predicated on a stable rules based international order.
> Honestly, if Trump keeps giving intelligence to Ukraine against Russia, then it was worth paying the (idiotic) tariffs.
But you already had that - this tariffs “deal” was just extortion, adding a tax for nothing
Trump stopped intelligence sharing on Russia with Ukraine in spring last year while tariff negotiations with the EU were ongoing.
>> What are we waiting for.
For Europe to become fully self-sufficient when it comes to defense, for one thing.
I think it can be Europe, Canada, Australia, and South Korea.
The world has the technology. Canada has the resources and the manufacturing capacity. Europe has the money. It can be done.
Look at Ukraine. They are becoming a military superpower in terms of technology and experience.
Europe has the money, the tech, the manufacturing capacity and the know-how. There is a reason Europe conquered the world in just a few years; the lady is way too good at war. One of the reasons post WOII we were quite satisfied with the idea of paying the USA with all kinds of privileges and support to their defense industry and have our own defenses knee-capped. War is horrible, we know that all too well. Reluctantly but surely the wheel has turned now. There are still gaps for intel gathering capabilities (think AWACS), but Saab is already working on alternatives. Also, Europe has to confront its inheritance of fragmentation (in which the USA has played a big role). Just look at all the various types of fighter jets being developed independently across Europe. That is very wasteful. Also, European armies have to incorporate the lessons from Ukraine. The Germans make the world's best tanks, but the advent of drones on the battlefield has shaken up all old mil. doctrines.
Aside 1: there are quite some areas where European weapon systems are state of the art, but you won't hear about that unless you are more in the know. The US is hurting itself here in a big way. Going alone = $$$$$$$$$$$$
Aside 2: The European Union has been conceived as an 'ever closer union' from the beginning as to lower the likelihood of new wars on the continent; something the USA pushed us to btw post-WOII. Canada and Australia have raw materials, something which Europe doesn't have abundantly. Sharing development costs across the free world is mainly why you see Canada, Japan, Australia etc having a heightened interest in Europe. There is world-wide a lot of interest in the European defense sector, but South Korea and Israel have also interesting defense sectors.
> There is world-wide a lot of interest in the European defense sector, but South Korea and Israel have also interesting defense sectors.
I think Israel has become politically just as toxic as the USA (or moreso even). It seems incredibly unwise to make your defense industry dependent on a currently openly warmongering genocidal state.
You are getting downvoted, but yes, this is something which can be observed already. The Israelian state has become a world-wide pariah state and that has repercussions for its own industry. Not in the USA, but I think this will quickly change even there. Germany is the exception here.
> The Israelian state
Israeli?
edit: why was this downvoted lol, am I missing some meme about "Israelian"? That's not a word.
> There is a reason Europe conquered the world in just a few years
that was a significant different europe than today.
Sure! On the other hand, after WO II the French secured a lot of designs from Germany. The know-how, the continuous improvements, the manufacturing base is still here in Europe, this hasn't been lost. It is mostly a matter of scaling up, which is happening now.
What is different for post-war Europe is that the USA forced Europe to stop developing their own complex central pieces, making Europe fully dependent on the USA. These pieces are critical and expensive and forces/limits the design parameters of connected systems. This handicapped a lot of Europe grown hardware. These critical dependencies are getting patched away atm, but that will take time because they are complex and expensive.
Yes, and thank god we Europeans got to be born in pax americana and not before, because there were wars nearly all the time for centuries, if not millenia.
Japanese here. Caved is not an accurate expression. After intense negotiations with Trump, Lutnick, and Bessent, Minister Akazawa managed to reduced the tariff from the proposed 25% to 15%. His story of flying weekly to the States on commercial aircraft became legendary.
PM's resignation stemmed from unpopularity not due to tariff negotiation, but diminished ability to pass laws after the ruling party lost significant number of seats in elections for upper and lower houses.
As for other countries around the world, the world-wide inflation caused many ruling parties to lose support.
lol - so they pled down from 25 to 15 ? What were the tariffs before ?
You're forgetting that their president was threatening literal invasion. These things take time.
they carved because most of those places want access to the 'yuuuge' US market.
politics vs reality. they could correct though by selling US treasuries - but that would make the world economy sneeze which might result in pneumonia.
The parent point is that the response should have been done collectively.
USA market is "yuuge", but rest-of-the-world market is much much bigger.
the market is bigger but doesnt necessarily have more USD to sownd on stuff
I don't understand.
US treasuries sound risky in a sense that if you accumulate them they become a crisis when you choose to sell.
Everyone is banking on the current trade policy simply being temporary and whoever replaces Trump in the White House next will restore bilateral trade to normal. Why would you destroy your trade relation with the U.S. for decades to come when you can just ride out a bad deal for a few years?
Not saying I agree with it, because it sends the wrong signal, but I can understand the reasoning at least.
> Why would you destroy your trade relation with the U.S. for decades to come when you can just ride out a bad deal for a few years?
We aren't the ones who are destroying it, and we have a backbone strong enough to say this isn't good enough.
If what you say is true, then the next administration should understand how one sided the damage done to the relationship has been. No economic trade partner should have to tolerate attacks on their sovereignty and unreliable trade negotiators.
> Why would you destroy your trade relation with the U.S. for decades to come when you can just ride out a bad deal for a few years?
This was a common attitude 2017-2020, and they got disabused of that notion when Trump won in 2024. I would further argue the muted response during Trump I based on an idea that thing would "return to normal" emboldened Trump II - so that was not a winning strategy. The only country that seemed to have the correct read, and translated it into policy was China. Every other trading partner of the US seems to be floundering still.
I am not sure how much of it is that, versus a mix of tariffs being paid by the recipient rather than the vendor, versus all his unpredictable behaviour being an inherent non-tariff barrier, versus it not mattering much what a deal with the USA even looks like if we all transition to other trade partners.
The UK's Neville Chamberlain is remembered for saying of an agreement with Hitler, "peace for our time"*, and by this agreement, appeasement; less well known was that he did pursue re-armament and mutual defence agreements while attempting to deescalate.
Hopefully we won't be here in 8 years wondering how the USA got carved up into a Canadian zone, a Chinese zone, a European zone, and an Aztec zone. That last one might be from a TV show I watched as a kid.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_for_our_time
What I fear is Trump didn't break any promise done to their electors by starting this trade wars (he did when he failed to stop actual military wars and started more instead, but that's a different point). He was elected by stating that America was the greatest country in the world and that the others were freeriding on US wealth. I'm not sure his successor can entirely overturn this policy, if a majority of the US voters believe this - also because undoing the damage would require brokering deals less favourable than before to show good faith. I live outside of the US so I might be misintepreting the situation, but I'm unconviced that a full u-turn will happen once he's out of the office.
I agree with you partially, although there’s some irony in the sense that a lot of what Trump’s voters want on paper is closer to the Democratic Party’s policy agenda.
Look into the policies and results the Biden administration had on American manufacturing versus the contraction in American manufacturing caused by tariff implementation. Biden even invested heavily in infrastructure in red states just because it was good positive ROI policy.
Now we see Democratic Socialist politicians like Zohran Mamdani doing things like cutting permitting red tape on small businesses and it’s the exact kind of thing the Republican Party claims it stands for.
The Tax Cut and Jobs Act actually raised taxes for lower wage Americans and increased the budget deficit, the exact opposite of typical Republican talking points on those subjects.
We have to remember that in a lot of cases, policy is not the same as messaging. This is especially pertinent in personality cults. This something the US hasn’t really experienced in the US presidency in quite some time if at all, and that has made it a…unique…experience. The idea of consistent policy is currently meaningless, because it’s all about whatever is on the demagogue’s mind today.
A majority don't believe. A plurality voted for Trump in 2024 because of inflation and Biden not leaving Harris enough time to run a proper campaign. It's only the MAGA voters who don't understand how global trade is good for the US economy. But Trump's even losing some of their support with how badly the administration is running things for anyone but the very wealthy.
i dont think you can really move the blame from voters wanting trump's policies onto biden.
trump won the primary and then the election
republicans who didnt want his policies and could see that the inflation was in a large part the result of trump's handling of covid would have put somebody else up for president
I think such people are delusional, I hope to be wrong and that the next elections are actually democratic, however I do have my doubts.
USA is basically a uniparty with respect to foreign policy. It's not like Biden restored US foreign policy wrt pre Trump tariffs on China...
It's a nice thought, but I wouldn't "bank" on it.
Pretty revealing how you had to hand wave away the entirety of "Liberation Day" tariff policy (literally the topic of this thread) that Biden did not do in office to do the perennial low-info voter "uniparty" observation, just because of China hawkishness.
The uniparty foreign policy blob that always does identical stuff regardless of party like: signing the JCPOA with Iran / killing the JCPOA and starting War with Iran, or rejoining UNESCO and paying back due obligations / re-leaving UNESCO and WHO... etc.
Exactly. You can't assume it's a new normal until Trump is out of office.
His re-election suggests we need to. Even if good times return, we can now never be sure the bad are more than one election cycle away, and given the USA's bicameral government and staggered elections, that means 2 years, not 4.
You can't assume things will return to the previous normal while the Supreme Court maintains its current composition either.
Which is why Democrats need to alter that composition once they retake power.
The conservative majority Supreme court will rule it unconstitutional. Then what?
They still can of course, all they need to do is collectively start selling off their US treasuries. The US is at a highly vulnerable and precarious point with their potential bond market debt spiral situation, and this is a point of leverage that can be exploited to encourage improved behavior from a bully.
This capital can then be reallocated into domestic investment to continue to decouple from the US. Very similar to how Germany learned the hard way that buying fossil gas from Russia wasn’t going to prevent aggression. Canada has started this with their recently announced energy investment plan, Europe can do this with Eurobonds.
PM Carney announces largest clean energy investment in North American history - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49339577 - August 2026
China and Canada Energy Pact as Canada Aims to Cut Reliance on US - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46640932 - January 2026 (a component of China’s next five year plan includes LNG infra investment to support imports from Canada)
On Eurobonds:
Macron says €300B in EU savings sent to the US every year will be invested in EU - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46722594 - January 2026 (207 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46708337
(Canada and Europe collective hold ~$9T in US treasury debt, almost 25% of total outstanding debt)
This is a classical problem. In theory it works when majority of the players work together and move in same direction, however everyone being opportunistic here makes in infeasible from long term perspective. Europe itself is in a difficult stage, its dealing with Russia on one end, has trust issues with China and now the its long term partner has gone rouge. The result of all this would be a mandate to be self sufficient aka anti-globalization
That multipolar world mandate you mentioned is already here today. That was the outcome of the actions of this US federal administration. Trust and cooperation is done for a half decade or more. The world can’t trust this administration for the remainder of the administration, and they can’t trust the US electorate to elect adults for the next administration. Countries can either accept it and take action to manage their risk (redirect investment to continue to decouple, trade deals with rational counterparties) to attempt to achieve a favorable outcome, or not and experience the potential natural consequences.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43284950 - March 2025
> “How can I decouple from the US as fast as possible?” is what this leads to.
> Diplomacy is the art of saying “good dog” until you make it to the rock. The US will apply pressure for short term gain against allies while they move away long term.
I think this is where Carney landed. Trust is gone. Further, the US and the world would have a precedence in dealing with Canada. Accepting a bad deal would maintain an illusion that this was good enough and to continue on in this direction. Once Trump is gone the negotiations could restart but at a much less valuable position to Canada.
Canada has had a long term investment and productivity challenge with too much focused on North and South. I suspect that this is now the catalyst for East and West investment.
I think the calculation was that no deal and the natural consequences are not that much worse than the deal on the table short term. And taking into account the future of the above it was going to be worse.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Oj4wIC7a8vI
“We take the world as it is, not as we wish it would be.”
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/livestory/us-canada-trade-war-...
> In the final hours of negotiations, the U.S. tried to include restrictions on Canada's ability to strike trade deals with other countries, Carney said.
> "Unacceptable," the prime minister said flatly.
> Plus, the U.S. tried to restrict Canada's protections of its languages, its culture and its sovereignty, Carney added. He did not provide details of what those restrictions looked like.
Japan did start selling off US treasuries because the yen is fucked. They stopped when the US agreed to buy yen and sell euros. If China starts selling treasuries, US is fucked. But it’s in China’s interest to have this incompetent in power.
Couldn't the US buy back more bonds through QE than any foreign country could sell?
Debasing the currency is equivalent to a soft default, and would accelerate investment away from the dollar and treasuries. Mechanically, certainly, it can be done, but investors won’t do nothing while the US inflates their asset value away. They’ll take the loss (which they’d take anyway from monetizing the debt) and reallocate elsewhere.
Part of the reason Ray Dalio was on Bloomberg saying to sell bonds and buy gold or Bitcoin. Treasuries used to be where capital would “flee for safety” and that concept is breaking down.
Dalio Says Sell Bonds, Buy Gold, Bitcoin as Debt Crisis Looms - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-21/dalio-say... | https://archive.today/jlUBA - August 21st, 2026
They were not prepared and at least had to mitigate immediate harm, while preparing their economies, security, etc. to be less entangled with the US.
But once they are 'prepared' as best they can, one approach is for other countries to decide / accept that the US is mostly a lost cause while Trump or most other Republicans are in power, which will happen at times. It will affect their economies but they cannot control that. Negotiating with the US only encourages more bad behavior.
The rest of the world could then recreate (or continue) the global trading system, including the WTO, simply excluding countries that violate its rules. This puts the ball in the US's court to participate or not, never slamming the door in the US's face, always welcoming and encouraging them rhetorically, by their rules, and genuinely ('we look forward to our friends in the US joining and enjoying the benefits of doing business with the rest of the world').
In the meantime, global trade rules would be created in the interests of the other countries, without the US having a voice - a great boon after decades of US domination of such rules. This incentivizes the US to join sooner rather than later.
(It seems to me - I have no expertise in this area.)
The world collectively had so much trade barriers for US goods and services and still has. They just weren’t direct like tariffs.
Yes sure. Add it to the pile of contradictory goals:
1. Bring back manufacturing jobs 2. Remove trade barriers 3. Make US rich by collecting huge amount of tariffs
If 1 is true then there is no benefit for countries to remove trade barriers or pay tariffs because now there is no leverage (manufacturing jobs to protect).
If 2 is true then there is no leverage for other things to happen - countries aren't going to voluntary remove trade barriers without keeping the jobs or paying tariffs.
So and so forth.
Any easy resolution to the math is that 1 will be false and Trump will be more than capable of throwing those workers under a bus.
Having guardrails against diarrhea lettuce is just reasonable policy.
Unfortunately, systematically and illegally dismantling the organization responsible for protecting us against diarrhea lettuce is a setback to that goal.
> trade barriers for US goods and services
are the trade barriers in the room with us?
To be fair, EU standards prevent the sale of lots of US products so that point, while misleading, is not entirely incorrect.
It goes both ways. You can’t buy an Iberian ham that’s fully compliant with EU standards and take it back to the US because it’s not USDA certified. It’s arguably the same flavor of backdoor protectionism involved.
> prevent the sale of lots of US products
Not only USA products. Most countries with low safety standards and known for dangerous products are barred from trading with the EU, or at least many of their products. Recently, even big Chinese on-line shops are being targeted for selling dangerous products and lying on the description on that products.
I understand that quality and safety is a diminishing goal for the USA. But I hope that other countries keep the care for their citizens as a achievable goal.
> is not entirely incorrect
With enough re-interpretation nothing is not entirely incorrect. Agree on the part that it is misleading.
That is not a trade barrier, that is just what you call "food" across the pond is actually trash.
In the softwood lumber dispute that's been going on for decades, the US raised (legitimately) the point that in Canada, land is granted by permit to loggers for only nominal fees; in the U.S. loggers have to pay significant amounts for rights to log. This is effectively a gov't subsidy to Canadian loggers by comparison with American loggers, allowing Canadian loggers to sell softwoods at a lower price.
This is the difficulty with discussing "trade barriers": things that are simply handled differently in different countries can be (arguably) economic factors that discriminate against one side or the other, hence they're trade barriers. Complicating it further, one can create barriers that have plausible deniability, or point to unrelated factors and scream "TRADE BARRIER".
I know someone who was involved for a while in the softwood lumber discussions. Just an absolute snake pit trying to suss out what are real barriers, intended barriers, relevant inputs... and all of this in the context of negotiations over the same, so everything is also "does he mean this or is he distracting us from something else or just building up a talking point to surrender later?"
trade courts did not find the US complaints legitimate, and repeatedly rule in canada's favour. the end root of the difference in cost is that canada is really big with a lot of forest and doesnt have better things to do with forested land.
the logs in canada are just worth less than the ones in the US. Differential advantage is a real thing that exists.
If the US government really beleives it to be a canadian government subsidy to loggers, it should be more than happy to give the tariff money to the canadian government, making canada's taxes and fees exactly what the US thinks they should be.
Agreed, but my point was that these things are hideously complicated and there's an endless source of details to hold up and say "NOT FAIR!" and it's ultimately about finding an agreement, not about the course of natural justice.
BTW, I'm Canadian. IIRC, the trade courts didn't find that the complaint about fees wasn't legitimate, it was that American logging companies had other, offsetting economic benefits, so the bottom line was that they weren't disadvantaged. So the U.S. simply refused to abide by the ruling and didn't pay the fine it was supposed to, so that receiving the fine or some portion thereof, became another thing to negotiate in the next round. Unbelievably hairy stuff.
Unless you can explain why the American stumpage fees are inherently "correct", this is simply a case of one country having a bigger supply of something and therefore being able to offer it much cheaper. You know... Capitalism working exactly as intended.
Isn't that kind of America's thing?
"No, not like that!"
All the rest of this is designed to distract from the real issue: Americans love Capitalism, except in the rare cases where they don't come out on top. Then everyone else is being mean and unfair.
It's funny. When European governments charge high fees, Americans deride them as socialist and anti-capitalist. When the American government does it (as it does here)? Why, it's the natural order of things! Our fees are the "correct" fees. It's everyone else that's wrong!
Please.
> are the trade barriers in the room with us?
Yes. And I'm saying this in the EU.
e.g. Ein Beispiel ist die verschiedene Sprache.
Although perhaps German is one of the stranger cases, given that I've seen the English phrase "Made in Germany" on some political posters around here: https://www.cdu.de/aktuelles/cdu-deutschlands/mainzer-erklae...
This is also a problem for trade between EU member states.
There's other examples of course, e.g. the Cybertruck is not road legal in the EU. Though I can hardly say that's "in the room" given how unpopular the vehicle is even in the USA.
Foreigners not speaking American is unfair?
Honestly if that is the best you can come up with, please try a lot harder.
its a government choice to not properly train americans to read and speak german, while it does for english.
that is a subsidy to american businesses and a barrier against german ones, when germany trains its Citizens in both german and english
it silly, but it is a barrier with a measurable dollar spend related to it
Unfair? I didn't say unfair, I said it was "in the room" with us. Most NTBs aren't unfair, but also most don't fit in a room and unlike language are abstract in ways most people don't engage with.
The local jobs market is currently demanding a lot of C1 German. This does not seem unfair to me. Does make it challenging to sell services to Germany if you can't provide it at that level.
Or, to put it another way, imagine my response had been:
You can only get so far with Google Translate in a business setting; I know, 'cause that's where I started, and it took me a long time to work up to "eh, you'll do".france has "made in france" too
The U.S. also has a huge amount of trade barriers that are indirect against the rest of the world. Don't act like the U.S. is the victim here.
One example: In Canada, there's a vibrant french language film industry, meaning films in french that originate and are made in Canada and then marketed abroad. The english language equivalent is anemic because decades ago, as part of trade negotiations, the Canadian gov't gutted subsidies for english language film production as a trade barrier against Hollywood.
This was totally the right move, if for no other reason than it's the only thing that this US admin will respect in the long run.
Being in Canada though this does look v. short sighted of the US. All this is going to achieve is pushing Canada much closer to other countries, particularly China, which at least superficially these negotiations were meant to prevent.
Trump and MAGA have destroyed the good relationships and trust that the US had built throughout the world. Canada's Prime Minister wrote [1]:
"We have recognised from the beginning that America has changed, and that we will not return to our old relationship. Our government understood, before many, that America is altering all its trade relationships. Putting tariffs on its closest allies and charging for access to its vast market."
[1] _ https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/statements/2026/08/21/statement...
sorry i am too out of the loop what is trumps beef with canada in the first place.
The US admin is basically Trump. Saying Trump will respect Canadian strength shows you are making the same mistake other people keep making in thinking Trump is somehow like them or is consistent enough to predict. I don't think Trump is a rational actor. He is a collection of ephemeral positions lacking coherence accumulated from random sources.
> All this is going to achieve is pushing Canada much closer to other countries
The world is watching this story just like the world watched Davos.
Last night will encourage further decoupling of the US for nations other than Canada.
idk if Trump 2028 will happen or not. I will say with conviction no matter who is in office by then will not rebuild trust around the world in their tenure. Too much damage is done to the US's reputation.
> I will say with conviction no matter who is in office by then will not rebuild trust around the world in their tenure. Too much damage is done to the US's reputation.
The only way that the US can start rebuilding this trust is that the incoming Democratic President and Congress (assuming we are so lucky) immediately starts by prosecuting Trump and his family (and results in actual jail time, not just fines or small stays), zero out their government contracts, fire most of the people installed in government since 2025, expand the Supreme Court, and remove the fillibuster. I know people think ideas like that are extreme, but really, what else is going to convince the rest of the world that the US has cleaned up their act? It has to start at home first.
That still will not convince anyone to trust the US. At any moment a new US president and congress can come in and do the same thing.
a de-nazification program similar to germany post-WW2, combined with a shredding and full rewrite of the US Constitution by western allies to bring it in line with estonia's as an example, in addition to clearing house with the Trumps is the kinda thing that would start building trust
Why bring the constitution in line with Estonia's? What's special about them?
I think the above person is correct, and you are on the right track.
I'm not hopeful for a full Constitutional Convention, but every possible effort by any means must be made to put into law every "unwritten norm" that the Trump administration took advantage of.
Impeachment is the mechanism to remove a rogue president, and the entire GOP is party to a "soft coup" against the Constitution of the United States. I agree it will take a complete societal rejection of MAGA and the Unitary Executive theory for allies to ever trust the US again.
There is absolutely nothing that will end American democracy faster than jailing Trump. The moment it becomes clear that the cost of losing is personal jail time for you and your family, every politician in the game has to start playing for blood, and everyone with power has to chose rubicon or jail.
If Trump goes to prison, that’s when I leave, because that will be the moment historians point to as “no going back”.
democracy is already dead of you cant jail trump when he does crimes
The cost of losing is only jail time for criminals. Your alternative is a carte blanche for any number of crimes in office.
My point isn’t “president should be above law”. My point is that, if Trump and admin go to prison on charges that are not so strong that it sways a large portion of the public and republicans, we’re fucked. Regardless of the underlying truth of the case, regardless of what I think is just or unjust, we’re fucked. Because unless it’s convincing enough that republicans also agree, then it’s death spiral.
So I’m hoping the justice department either doesn’t have enough of a case to convict, or has enough of a case that the whole country falls in line. The in between, it’s time to get out. Because shit will go downhill very fast.
> The moment it becomes clear that the cost of losing is personal jail time for you and your family
That has always been clear, seeing how it is the default mode of operation for empires throughout history. The solution here is separation of powers: the ruler itself is bound by rules and institutions that provide a check on their power, and in turn those institutions protect the ruler after stepping down.
It is Trump and the Republican party that chose to abandon that solution. There already is no going back from that choice.
The United States isn't a monarchy, we fought a whole war to establish that. Our leaders aren't meant to be above the law. If our "democracy" can't survive putting even a President in jail for their crimes than it doesn't deserve to survive.
And I reject your premise that putting one's leaders in jail will only lead to an infinite spiral of partisan kangaroo courts because other democracies manage to hold their leaders to legal account without going into a death spiral.
And it's honestly weird and more than a bit disturbing how controversial that simple concept has become. I guess we really do want kings here.
He’s seen by at least 50% of the population as completely valid. Any jail time, unless he does something egregious enough that even republicans support it, will be seen as political targeting and “sending a message” by at least 50% of the electorate. And guess what republicans will say? “Once we get in power, we’re throwing all democrats involved with his jailing into prison”, and the cycle will escalate.
“than it doesn't deserve to survive”. There it is, out loud. If you only support democracy when your side wins then you are just an authoritarian who wants democratic cover. You’re just as bad as Trump.
"Republicans will jail the innocent if democrats jail the guilty" really says a lot
You have to be insane to think it is that black and white.
> “Once we get in power, we’re throwing all democrats involved with his jailing into prison”
You implied that Democrats would be jailed for following the law with this comment.
> He’s seen by at least 50% of the population as completely valid.
This is laughable.
He never hit 50% in the popular vote, and that doesn’t count the ‘none of the above/don’t care’ non-voters. That was at the peak of the oligarch-funded campaign that saw record-smashing spending and advertising to gin up support.
His popularity immediately fell after the election and has been sliding the entire time he’s been in office. A majority of voters supported his impeachment shortly after he started the Iran war in back April and he’s even more unpopular now.
> If you only support democracy when your side wins then you are just an authoritarian who wants democratic cover.
Yeah, no. Obviously not what I said, or what my comment implied, and you're not even trying to respond in good faith.
No sorry I’ll be more nuanced.
Unless Trump does something egregious enough in the coming years that the case against him is rock solid, black and white, and heavy, any move to jail him and those around him is impossible to distinguish from political targeting. I have not seen evidence of something out of line enough, no matter what Reddit hive mind thinks.
So with the knowledge I have, I’d say any serious push to jail him and his team would be terrifying. If we get crystal evidence of bribery that holds up in court and is clear enough to sway a large swath of Republicans, then that’s great. Still a worse outcome than there not being something black and white to nail him with, but I think that case democracy survives. But not “trumped up” charges.
It’s a good thing that they’ve committed many blatant and easily provable criminal acts then. The type you spend the rest of your life in prison for, if you’re not being protected by captured systems. Market manipulation, insider trading, embezzlement are all happening obviously and publicly, just to start. Bribery and corruption at many levels, illegal use of things like ICE, illegal detention, ignoring and abusing courts and the judicial system, whatever the hell they’re doing with crypto, the list is basically whatever crime you can think of. I understand you, and that it will mean republicans and their base won’t be swayed, which will create huge problems. But we’re well past the point that anything would ever sway them. There’s no easy way out now, the choice is being increasingly abused by them forever or taking the hits now to stop it. Pulling punches now will only ensure that it comes back 10x worse later.
If I had to guess at anything it would be bribery, market manipulation, and crypto related business. The others I just don’t see even making it through, there is way too much room for interpretation of powers.
“Pulling punches now will only ensure that it comes back 10x worse later” and using punches will what, subdue? This is half the political power of America you’re talking about punching. Republicans will what, roll over? You think democrats win handily enough to end it?
It escalates the blood feud. The way out of a blood feud is de-escalation, amnesty, forgiveness, working together. Not demanding more blood, even if you think it is perfectly justified.
His approval rating is somewhere between 30%-35% depending on the poll. So no it's not 50%.
> You’re just as bad as Trump.
No, Trump's 2nd term is in the running for most corrupt administration in American history. Even what Nixon did would just be another scandal for this administration that would leave the news cycle in a couple weeks.
He, or at least his officials and family need to be held accountable. That is the right, just and Constitutional thing to do.
What if Trump retroactively pardons himself and his family for all possible crimes in the past 10 years, the same way Biden did?
congress can impeach him, which makes those pardons null
Biden didn't pardon himself afaik.
But... that's still perfectly legal, isn't it? All of these little backdoors the founding fathers added to the executive as some vestigial organ of monarchical power just because they couldn't trust the people in "we the people" maybe should be reconsidered. If we don't want presidents to be able to pardon themselves and anyone else without limit, there are ways to make that happen. Never even bothering to convict any president of a crime doesn't even attempt to fix that problem however.
and do other countries really put their criminal official in jail? do they establish any kind of restitution to the victims?
can you really point to a single government where they dont illegally communicate outside of logged channels, or any such things, to scam the voters? or where they intentionally promise something they have zero intention of keeping, or lying about whether its possible. and of course some such things are not considered crimes because the very people who would then be violating the law would be the ones who MAKE the law.
the vast majority of politicians worldwide are super criminals doing things that if you or I did even 1/100 what they did, they would lock us up and throw away the keys.
The problem is they're also stifling trade with China. We still have quotas on Chinese cars so that they don't flood the market with affordable cars to preserve our (yours and ours) inferior car industry.
It's basically what Canada is doing to the US with dairy, except with Chinese cars.
What is going to happen is this lack of deal will accelerate the (inevitable) decline of the Canadian car industry, which will reduce objections to the Chinese imports leading to those quotas changing in an ever accelerating feedback loop.
From the US strategic perspective this is moving out of the frying pan and into the fire.
I don't understand this and would like a clarification.
There are zero Canadian automobile assemblers; they are Canadian subsidiaries of American companies, with some parts manufacturers being here.
Assuming American companies (and companies from subordinates like Japan) leave, what would be the problem in having a similar relationship with China? Is it because their manufacturing is more integrated?
The American, and other auto makers, only manufacturers in Canada because the Canadian and American auto markets have been integrated for over 80 years. Removing Canada's access to the American market basically makes Canadian auto manufacturing uncompetitive since Canada isn't a big enough market to sustain a domestic auto market.
It's so obvious that you'd think its intentional.
Canada having closer trade ties with China is also a case of "out of the frying pan and into the fire" for Canada.
I think people forget that China is an authoritarian ethno state with a single leader for life.
But hey, they have cheap shit, so what better wagon to hitch your country to?
I'm in the EU and my masters did hand over the car market to chinese cars and this was a very stupid move.
Some EU carmakers are fighting back but it's very hard when politicians managed to have energy price in the EU being about 7x higher than those carmakers in China do pay.
I'm not for tariffs but China is dumping and if we don't all want to end up being vassals of China, we should at least protect some of our industries.
And as "good" as chinese EVs are, I'm sorry but they're not anywhere near the quality of, say, what German cars used to be.
If western carmakers had been given a reasonable timeline to switch to EVs and reasonable energy price, the situation would be different.
EU carmakers may be saved by people preferring to buy cars from their own continent but that remains to be seen. The latest BMW EVs, for example (once you remove the spying / remote control issues: but that affects chinese EVs doubly so), are apparently very fine machines.
> not anywhere near the quality of, say, what German cars used to be.
To be fair, German cars aren’t anywhere near the quality that German cars used to be, either.
There is a huge difference between breaking partnerships by fast uni-directional policies vs. slow uni-directional or bi-directional policies.
EU and even USA should start doing something reasonable. Like introducing quota on how much overall can be imported/exported to protect local markets. Like lets say 40%.
Everyone gets a piece of cake.
But lets be honest, germany (my country) also never played fair. We gained quite a lot of export strength through the Euro and overall german politics.
And its not just the energy prices, it was quite clear what the energy prices going to be but no one really invested into reducing them early or fast enough at all. No one cared. BMW new factory in hungarie though does has a lot more reneablw and was able to continue production despite hungaries energy issue.
In China a person makes 500-1000 per month, in germany the same person makes a lot more.
China you have raw resources and cheap labor and cheap energy on EVERY SINGLE point of the process. From iron ore to the assembly itself.
And it doesn't matter much anyway because with the current and future grade of automatisation, a lot less money is getting directly to the people.
We need laws enforcing the rich to pay the taxes and/or invest A LOT more a lot faster and a lot broader.
We need real politics and not this garbage happening in germany or in the USA or in Russia.
>and reasonable energy price
Nice Jedi Hand Wave there.
That's the issue.
China invested in producing cheap energy. Most of the rest of the world did not.
At root, economics is about turning energy into goods and services. If the root industrial input of your competitor is cheaper than the cost of that same root industrial input to you, you're gonna need some incredible efficiencies elsewhere in that production pipeline to pull even.
At this point, the EU should be all about keeping the other major powers at arm's length, (economically and militarily), while pursuing renewable electrification with all deliberate speed.
That should be everyone else' strategy going forward as well by the way. Without cheap energy in the next global economic phase, your nation or bloc is dead in the water.
I have close the zero faith that the EU would be able to make the cultural changes necessary to move to self dependance.
Especially with being well behind in the current AI arms race. You need the opposite of a "workers utopia" to do all the things the EU needs to do, and do them fast.
They either stay with the US or become a vassal of Xi Jinpeng.
you dont really need to get involved in the ai arms race though. a late comer will still benefit from better designed at higher volume lower energy chips, and good enough open weight models.
> China invested in producing cheap energy.
You mean coal[1][2]?
[1] https://www.carbonbrief.org/chinas-construction-of-new-coal-...
[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/katharinabuchholz/2026/02/27/ch...
Did the parent say clean energy or cheap energy? Obviously yes, coal.
Though coal has dropped as a percentage of their portfolio fairly dramatically, and in absolute twh has been stable since 2010, with other energy sources growing.
These two things (investment in green energy and coal) can be true at the same time.
China dominates global clean energy investment, accounting for more than half of the $1.1 trillion invested worldwide between 2019 and 2025, while the United States contributed approximately $236 billion, representing less than a quarter of the total. - https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/energy/articles/china-spen...
No idea why you got flagged here, you've pretty clearly said reasonable things.
I've even clicked the flag link by accident. I don't take it personally, regardless of the outcome.
> quality of, say, what German cars used to be.
They are 80% there for 30% the price as a consumer it’s a tremendous deal
Ask why does China have cheap energy. Indeed, why was China able to save Trumps ass by halving its oil imports and preventing a catastrophic meltdown of oil-driven economies?
> it's the only thing that this US admin will respect in the long run
They don't respect anything. They stand for nothing. Their only concern is to pay lip service to Trump's crazy ideas.
Trump's crazy ideas
s/Trump.*ideas/Line their own pockets/
For example, the first tariff wave was a huge transfer of wealth from citizens to corporations in the OBBBA. First, the income from tariffs was projected to offset the tax cuts for the rich and corporations. Then, when the Supreme Court found them unlawful, the money had to be returned. But first the corporations let consumers pay the tariffs by increasing product prices, but now it is the same companies who get the tariff refunds. And since they are obviously not going to give the money back to the customer, it lined their pockets.
They stand for Project 2025 and the Maralago Accord, and the ideology behind them. So far they followed both projects quite closely. Trump is a tool they have to manage to reach their goals
Also, of course, extracting as much money from the state as possible
Had to look up "Maralago Accord": https://marketwise.com/investing/what-is-the-mar-a-lago-acco...
Wow, a global Great Depression II really does look like it is in the cards.
FWIW it’s what Vance has been hinting at multiple times in recent public statements, and what Bessents seems to be following
Those people always assume like the US can do stuff in a vacuum. And they always underestimate how smart other economies will respond to the chaos. Most big economies are in a better position than the USA.
> This was totally the right move, if for no other reason than it's the only thing that this US admin will respect in the long run.
Unfortunately, Canada (where I live) will feel way more pain from this than the US. I am not sure Trump will have respect for this at all, but the alternative was to put in a permanent trade deal that significant disadvantaged Canada.
I know that this is insanely complex with everybody protecting their own economies, but I think this is where middle powers working together more strongly could help. Imagine that Canada, the EU, and Britain worked together as an economic NATO, where a tariff attack on one is a tariff attack on all. It would hurt the US much more to bully one of these economies.
UK used to have that kind of protection up until a few years ago, but they decided it was not worth it.
Canada and the EU already have a trade agreement since 2016. The UK economy is about 1/5th that of the EU, not enough to move the dial, and they kind of went off in the opposite direction around that same time...
You'd need n^2 "NATO"'s then, because EU has implemented many really shitty policies too and someone would want to fight back against that too. UK may do the same.
And we already have an actual NATO example, where one member attacks countries around the world, one of those countries fights back, threathening to attack american bases even in europe if needed... and now other nato members might get involved in a war that was started by one of it's own members, that no one else really wanted, and side on the side of the agressor ( https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/nato-chief-reaffirms-allianc... ). To turn back into economics, what happens when EU declares an "economic war" against china, china retalites (by eg. banning exports of something we really need)... does canada go along and threathen it's own economy? Or do they form a new "NATO" with "everyone-else except EU"?
There is also the factor that Canada has been propping up unsustainable dead end industries on a massive scale for years, and that this will make any pain from such a situation, deal or no deal, that much worse.
Most obviously Southern Ontario is living in a dreamland where inexplicably ICE autos remain a viable industry ad infinitum.
Some forced reality, by any means, will in the long run prove to be welcome.
That will continue with only cars made in Canada not having Canadian tariffs. You make 100,000 cars in Canada everything above that amount is subject to tariffs.
The last ~60 years have been a process by which the North American auto industry has been so heavily integrated that there is no such thing as a car made entirely in one country or another, especially in the Detroit–Windsor corridor.
Canada has manufacturers that the US doesn't (and won't for at least 5 years) and vice-versa.
Autos are more obvious than the dairy industry, even though Trump claimed a couple of days ago that the reason there was an imminent deal is because Canada allegedly agreed to eliminate dairy tariffs? Trade negotiations have stalled almost certainly because Canada isn't actually willing to give up dairy tariffs.
Besides dairy, one of the last major quota based protected industries in Canada was the taxi industry. It's interesting to compare and contrast the two. It used to be that if you could put together enough of a down payment to get a loan to pay $1M for a taxi license or for a quota allocation for 20 cows you'd be set for life, as long as you were willing to put in long hours. We had no qualms throwing the taxi drivers under the bus, but are willing to go to the mat for those dairy producers. Is it because taxi drivers were mostly brown skinned?
Food is much more important on Maslow's hierarchy than taxis.
Which is why Canadians wanting a protected monopoly is especially interesting. Usually when something is considered important we want everyone to have access to it, not only the handful of elites who get legal control over it all.
I suppose that explains why Canadian's won't allow the staple foods to also be supply managed, only accepting it for luxury foods (and once tobacco) that wouldn't cause a crisis if they disappeared.
The dairy cartel is very strong in Canada (similar to the maple syrup one). They are deeply embedded in the government.
It'd be like trying to convince the US to reduce their Corn cartel. Except the corn industry keeps prices low, paid for by the American tax payer and demand mandates, and the Dairy cartel keeps prices high so consumers pay for the lack of competition.
Plausible.
The Quebec PM did say that if the dairy industry wasn't happy they wouldn't put US alcohol badk on the shelves, which would have effectively killed the whole thing.
While a factor I doubt this is the whole story though.
> While a factor I doubt this is the whole story though.
No story can be told in a HN comment. No story can be fully told in words.
However, having spent much of my existence around the Canadian diary industry it is clear that it has always been the biggest sticking point in US and Canada relations. Not just today, but that's been the case for my entire life.
As a Canadian, I am willing to suffer if it means long term benefits.
Carney is very popular for a reason.
No deal is better than a bad deal.
No deal is a bad deal. Just for an indefinite term.
Is anyone else getting that feeling about hearing the world "deal" so much that it's losing any meaning whatsoever?
What exactly does this word mean? It definitely doesn't mean a stable set of agreements that can be relied upon to ensure a stable future business environment. That's not in the cards.
What I suspect Carney is doing, and fully support as a Canadian, is running down the clock. An agreement is America isn't worth anything without leverage to back it. The main goal is to stall to delay the damage as much as possible while diversifying away our economic dependence on the US. There is no other long-term goal - everything else is just appearances and showmanship.
I'm sure many Canadians are fine with a "bad no deal" if it means not negotiating with an unreliable partner that consistently engages in threatening Canada's national sovereignty.
This implies that the US respects the agreements it signs
Trump’s deals also are of indefinite terms. Ask the Saudis - their big nuclear deal fell apart within a day as Trump added new conditions out of thin air.
You can't respect someone who doesn't respect their self. It's a mistake to attribute personality features to countries, but not to their leaders.
Similarly, people who don't have self-respect don't respect others.
I think you're right that this will be more painful for Canada, economically, but I'm not so sure about "way more". But politically, it will be much more painful for the US side of the negotiation than for the Canadian side. The Carney administration is on much firmer political ground than the Trump administration. Time is on Carney's side.
>The Carney administration is on much firmer political ground
I don't think so. Time really isn't on Carney's side either.
Carney's new tariffs fall on those who, in aggregate, did not vote for him. The average Carney voter has been very vocal about wanting to pursue this tactic- that's why they elected him. (That average voter is an Eastern retiree whose holdings are generally in real estate, so they don't care about any other economic sector beyond that which keeps their property values high, especially compared to the feel-good Elbows Up stuff.)
But Carney's currently having trouble just keeping the country together at this point. That's why he's approving projects he really doesn't want to approve out West, like those oil pipelines, because the West has credibly signaled that that they might just ban Carney and his Eastern voting block from making law and collecting tax from them if development of their part of the country is hindered any further. But if it's not hindered, they'll grow in political power, which is also an inherent threat to Ottawa's power (just not immediately).
And yet here Carney is- for the second time now- imposing more economic roadblocks that drive up consumer prices and put more people out of work for no reason other than his voting block wanting it that way. "Just retaliate" might be the least bad option for Carney to pander to that voting block, but every concession to them drives the country closer to separation, and that has time pressure too.
I think you're mistaken about the effect that the Albertan premier's artificially manufactured "independence" campaign is having on the electorate.
Outside of the small fringe communities that support it, the reaction of the broader country has been to actually shift MORE into hardline stances against the US, as the effort is seen largely as an American manufactured thing.
Additionally, I'd advise to take with caution perspectives from any sources that would characterize the province of Alberta as "the west".
>the broader country
Not really, though. Despite what even a good chunk of Canadians (or yourself) might think, the country doesn't end at Toronto.
If the government wasn't worried about the effects, they wouldn't be in any hurry to approve the infrastructure projects; they've been in the works for a very long time, stalled out. Urban Easterners claim to believe the planet will explode if they're built, and the governments they elect act accordingly, but it's really just a power thing.
Additionally, I'd advise you to not think you know better than the people that actually live here.
This sort of rhetoric leads me to believe you've been enmeshed in the online and more um.. "engaging", rhetoric on this which no doubt paints a very compelling narrative.
The government's actions are much better explained by a sudden actual, panicked focus on actual development of the economy towards some combination of diversification and domestic demand - after the governing party's leader was replaced by arguably a much more results oriented PM after having been governed for a while by a much more vibes oriented PM.
Opening up the pipeline projects required more than just "conceding" to Alberta, it required negotiating with BC and the native tribes that would have a say in the path and ensuring they got the concessions they needed. Boring work. Not really meme material and doesn't make the headlines.
Between all the things the government has been doing - the oil sector work, the acceleration of military procurement, the various bilateral trade agreements, and work on easing internal trade restrictions, acceleration of internal projects - it's easy for some interest or another to cherry pick a particular set of events and use them to paint a narrative.
These narratives would be more compelling and maybe work better at other times, but the issue currently is that the American president is just so effective at drowning out any of these. There's nothing quite so unifying as an obnoxious tyrant rambling on about your country in disrespectful terms.
The commentary (mistakenly) assuming my nationality could probably have been left out of your response :)
To me, it seems like you have a myopic view of the situation that is overweighting the importance of a political movement that has high salience for you, but fairly low salience for most of the electorate.
I'm so tired of Albertan exceptionalists grabbing attention. They annoy their neighbours no end (including far too many Albertans I know).
a loud minority in rural Alberta is not "the West"
It's all relative. I'm sure you're right that Carney will lose some support because of this, but he'll also gain and solidify some other support. And he has lots of room to give. We haven't had leadership in the US as popular as the current Canadian leadership for over 15 years. Whereas the Trump administration's approval is so low that the only question is whether there is even any room lower to go.
> Unfortunately, Canada (where I live) will feel way more pain from this than the US. I am not sure Trump will have respect for this at all, but the alternative was to put in a permanent trade deal that significant disadvantaged Canada.
It's unfortunate and in some ways unfair. I hope the Canadian economy will move towards more open trade partners and will proposer.
The thing that I really struggle to understand is what the grand vision behind this is. A logical consequence of the tariffs is that Canada, Europe and other American allies focus more on those who are willing to trade with them, including China.
If I put a 2/3y contract in place with an American supplier, there's a fair chance that I might have to deal with 10-50% tariffs at some point during the contract. This does make (long)-term business deals with the US risky.
There is no grand vision. Trump has an irrational love of tariffs. He just likes them, they feel right to him. It is entirely that we have a presidential system with an executive that is capable of too much unilateral action, and we elected someone to that office who is unfit for it.
Does the admin’s affinity for tariffs have anything to do with Lutnick? His “former” firm bought tariff credits from companies for pennies on the dollar - huge upside if you knew what was coming.
Trumps been talking about tariffs since the 80's https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEDVdSclDqg
I'd say that's more effect than cause.
I do think that Trump is irrationally attached to protectionism, but I also think that tariffs have at least 2 concrete benefits for him: 1) as a tool of economic coercion to achieve geopolitical ends, and 2) as a form of corruption to solicit de facto bribes in exchange for exemptions.
When you are forbidden to expand taxation on the people with money, because "ideology" and your country is accruing debt at historic levels, tariffs are about the only revenue source that you have that won't make the oligarchs angry.
I don't think this has anything to do with revenue or the national debt. They don't seem to care about that at all.
Trump is one of oligarchs.
This is something so far removed from the way normal, constructive way people (have to) think and behave with each other as a prereq to participate in society that they will inevitably fail to see this parasitical dynamic, because there is no way they can relate to that from their own frames. Even when we learn about this we will instinctively dismiss it. It doesn't fit our frame of reference, so we decide this can't be true.
Perhaps, but Canada will emerge stronger. The US doing to flip Congress by a margin of 2 and just lock in Trump insanity until something really bad pops.
As I’ve said from the beginning, just ask yourself: what would Putin want?
Every baffling, self destructive move Trump makes, basically always aligns to a long stated goal of Russia.
Putin wanted Trump to decapitate the Iranian regime?
Let's be serious, that has nothing to do with the Canadian situation, which has more than enough going on without needing to imagine things.
Edit to add: the extent to which many of you will apparently blame anything and everything on Putin is extraordinary. Just because the sun shines on Putin as well does not mean he made it do so.
But it has turned out positive for Russia. Not enough patriot rockets for Ukraine, sanctions against Russia lifted and higher oil prices.
Clearly Putin is playing 4D chess /s. Having all the main export infrastructure blown up by Ukraine is also part of the plan.
sure, but ukraine is not able to stop its own export infrastructure from being blown up, or defend itself from north korean missiles anymore.
europe and east asia whove been helping to fund and arm ukraine are also taking the real pressure from iran and the US halting energy exports from the gulf.
the oil price for high enough to where russia gets paid the same amount despite having most of its infrastructure blown up, vs having its infrastructure blown up and also the oil proce being low.
Yes, it has that effect. It is just IMO unlikely that this was planned and steered by Putin. If he was that smart he either would not have started the war with Ukraine or would have won the war with Ukraine.
The war with Ukraine is currently doing huge damage to Russia. Maybe Putin wants to be more securely in charge of a diminished Russia. IMO again, I doubt that.
Please read the discussion before you comment. Infrastructure damage is because of Ukraine's actions, not because of trump. We were discussing trump's actions benefiting Russia. Not saying it's on purpose, probably incompetence.
The discussion is if Trump is Putins puppet or not. Seems like you agree with fidotron that is is just incompetence, so you should not have argued against him.
Yes? The US is currently running out of oil. The strategic reserve has been drawn so low it is in danger of failing. The US economy is being propped up by an AI bubble, and the folks currently in charge of Iran are even more tied to Russia than the previous regime. And oh, by the way, when the US can’t draw down from the reserve any longer they’ll be forced to ease sanctions on Russian oil.
the US is also daring canada to shut off the taps on the oil the US actually uses for its own gas
We have fewer weapons to sell to Ukraine since we have expended a huge amount and are pulling a carrier out of Asia due to the debacle. I'm pretty sure Putin/Xi are happy to see us enter yet another Middle East quagmire.
> Putin wanted Trump to decapitate the Iranian regime?
This is impractical. There is a hierarchy of thousands of Mullahs that ascend when you kill off one. There is no "head". It's a distributed hierarchy or hydra, rather than an effective dictatorship. ofc, Trump wanted to appease Bibi and Trump fired most of the advisors who object to his bad ideas, so it was a perfect storm for a global quagmire.
I don't think you need to be so specific about it. It's more about the overall goal: weakening the United States as much as possible. And if that means embroiling them in a pointless war and wearing down their stockpiles... Well, you can see how that would be advantageous.
Biden gets Russia and Ukraine stuck in a quagmire in Ukraine, so Putin retaliates by getting the U.S. and Iran stuck in a quagmire in the Middle East. Wars are won by the countries that stay out of them. The Russia-Afghanistan war played a very significant role in the downfall of the Soviet Union.
The irony is that China is the big winner from all of this, simply by staying above the fray and making trade deals with all the countries that more bellicose superpowers start fighting. When your adversary is making a mistake, let him.
Putin got stuck in Ukraine, not sure what Biden did
His strategy was to give Ukraine just enough weapons to prevent annihilation without giving them so many weapons that would allow them to win. Hence, quagmire. The weapon sales also came with conditions like not allowing them to strike deep within Russia itself, all of which prolongs the war without leading to a clear victor.
But Russia and Putin can end the war at their earliest convenience. Your perspective discounts the agency of the aggressor, places all agency in weaponry (as opposed to the will of the defenders) and doesn't acknowledge that the Biden approach offered a continuous off-ramp that should have been taken. I'm not sure how allowing Russia to not suffer defeat means that they must continue their barbaric war against Ukraine.
The Iran war is good for Russia. Regime "decapitation" does not harm Russia, oil going up is good for then. America being weakened and stuck there is good for then too.
Putin wanted the US military presence in the middle east to be severely crippled, which it is now.
He would also want the munitions stockpile to be depleted, which it is now.
Though I do agree, not literally every move Trump does is on a string from Putin and the Iran war isn't one; it sure still is mighty convenient all the same to make the US military look weak and incompetent.
I'm confused. Is he a Putin's puppet or Netanyahu's? He can't be both: these two don't align.
> He can't be both: these two don't align.
They could be both pulling at the strings, often in different directions with varying success. It could even be tracked by the people going in and out of favor with the admin: MTG, Carlson, Gubbard riding high? Russia's pull is stronger. Them becoming pariahs reduced to criticizing the Iran war from the peanut gallery? Israel has taken over.
My actual argument is that the theory that he's a puppet being pulled is not a serious one. Much like a chocolate for hunger, it's just an intellectually lazy explanation for people who look for intellectually lazy explanations.
That's a valid theory.
With each other maybe? In practice they are very aligned.
They are only aligned in that certain parts of the western elites hate both of them.
They represent two completely opposite poles, geopolitically. Not horseshoe theory compatible: they are mutually exclusionary.
Would Putin want Germany to cancel the shut down of its nuclear power plants as Trump urged it to. [1]
The Green Movement in Europe, which Trump opposes, was best thing to happen to Putin.
As far as I can see, where Trump goes wrong is the same place the social democrats go wrong: believing in economic fallacies. In Trump's case that would be the belief that tariffs are beneficial.
He also on rare occasion aligns with very socialist leaning politicians like Elizabeth Warren, like when he sought to prevent private equity from buying up housing — which totally misdiagnoses the cause of the housing shortage. But it's these economic fallacies that makes Trump popular for the same reason social democrats are popular. The vast majority of people don't understand economics.
[1] https://youtu.be/eKEycjREgPE
The most ironic thing is that Chernobyl basically solidified that Europe would be dependent on Russia for the next 30 years.
It’s curious how tariffs are always a bad move for the US, but always a good move for other countries.
This is the way. If the US imposes tariffs, impose tariffs on US goods.
The US administration twists facts to suit their agenda. For example, they often complain about the trade deficit the US has with other countries. However, that deficit often (depends on the country) only exists if you exclude digital goods (Microsoft, Google, Apple, etc.).
If the rest of the world were to restrict the import of those digital goods, in the interest of fairness, the tech lobbyists would swarm D.C. in panic.
Europe/Canada should ban chatgpt/anthropic and say "ok we will use chinese models for our vibe coding I guess" and watch the stock market implode overnight. Remenber when they tried to ban non-US citizens from using Fable? best to remove that sword of damocles now regardless
This has always been an option pre-AI (block MS, block Google, etc). They never done that before why would they do that now?
The examples you provide are way more integrated into governments and organizations. LLMs are not even in the same country let alone postal code.
The US wasn't, for the most part, treating them as an adversary before
Because they were allies and not in economic war before?
Heads up, you would want to keep the sword of damocles in that case, no matter how illusory.
Good luck with the Chinese models I’d say. Next they’ll be using Russian ones just because they hate Trump so much haha.
It feels good to say things like the EU and Canada should just ban whatever, but the US can just ban imports of critical goods from Europe too and harm European industries (I’m not in favor of this but it’s certainly an option).
So if the EU can cozy up to China, well we can drop the whole Taiwan issue and cozy up to China too. If Europeans don’t care about democracy in Taiwan maybe we shouldn’t either. Oh and by the way, China is helping Russia prosecute its war against Ukraine (just like Iran and North Korea) but I guess Trump sent some mean tweets so NATO is over, all the alliances are over, the EU and Canada will cozy up to China, and ban all American products. Things that can be easily discarded by both sides aren’t worth much.
the advantage US labs have is that we use them. If chinese labs got 1 years worth of usage from everyone else as their daily driver, they would catchup if not overtake the US based firms - assuming you even think that they're truly behind anyway.
Ok. Don’t use them and then we’ll just leverage China’s models too. What’s the problem? Why does the US need to lead in AI if Europe (and everyone else) prefers to partner with China? We can just partner with them too. They can have Taiwan. We can pull out of NATO and bring our troops home from overseas bases around the world. It’ll save us a lot of military spend and then we don’t have to play these games anymore.
Besides we can just distill Chinese modules and release open weights like they do now.
I mean this would be great haha, America voluntarily ceding its position as the supreme global power without bloodshed. Its the best we could hope for. Now watch the US show that this is the one course they will never take.
Well it's unlikely we'd voluntarily cede it, but in the event that we do so, Russia dominates Europe, Iran dominates the Middle East, and China takes over Taiwan and shares dominance with the US in the Pacific.
Of course the US not going to war over these areas may not shed American lives, but I think it would be immature to suggest that European, Saudi, Taiwanese, or other blood wouldn't be spilt in war. For example as we cede our supreme global power without bloodshed, as you prefer, we would obviously withdraw from NATO and move all US forces from Europe (except maybe the UK) and so Russia would then mobilize forces, attack the Baltics, and so forth. But I guess if that's the best you'd hope for that's on you - I'm surprised you are aligned so closely with MAGA foreign policy but you find all sorts of viewpoints on the internet.
By the way, isn't Germany losing 10,000 manufacturing jobs per month? I hope Europeans enjoy further ceding economic power to them and losing industrial capacity.
I'd generally rather be number 1, but hey being number 2 with roughly the same standard of living, a lot less expenses and criticism, and less hatred seems OK to me.
Russia dominates "Europe"; what, that Russia who can't even beat Ukraine? That can't even make ball bearings anymore? That has to pull North Korean troops in? We're fucking terrified man.
I think Poland alone could defeat Russia, if it even still exists in the current form in a few years -- add the finances of France and Germany and it's even more one sided.
you are very optimistic about keeping your standard of living when you will have to sell stuff to china in order to have access to global capital.
losing that #1 status also means you have to work for a living, rather than just printing dollars and debt. see: britain
everyone in the west except the US already has to deal with that, so we'll be fine
Im anti MAGA because it was obvious from the beginning it was a pack of lies. He ran on "no news wars" and then started one. Ad nauseum. There no point debating policy with the Mafia who are taking over your block. If it were about policy, yes I do think Im actually pretty aligned with what average Anerican voters want.
The important thing when dealing with Americans is to pay no attention to what they say as that is all "PR", you only need to observe what they do. Most Americans dont know this even about themselves, which is why they end up with a guy like Donald Trump
> He ran on "no news wars" and then started one.
that's a weird example to give about it being lies from the beginning when he spent 4 years not being at active war with iran
8note since I cant reply to you directly as the thread is too long - ok, maybe I should have used "release the Epstein files" or "bring down the national debt"
Ironically Canada’s trade deficit with the USA is largely due to our oil exports.
Remove that the trade is fairly balanced.
Why is this ironic? I see this point a lot but don’t understand the underlying reasoning for why it is a meaningful rebuttal?
It’s insane that the US administration (said as an American) doesn’t continue to treasure a values-aligned, peaceful, stable, independent neighbor along a massive unprotected border.
But I don’t understand this energy carve-out argument.
Expectation is that Canada should have a balanced trade with the USA. The reality is that Canada will always have a trade deficit because of oil exports to the USA, especially now when the USA needs it the most.
That is the ironic part.
There’s not a lot of irony in trade politics, but more ignorance. It’s perfectly fine to have a trade deficit with individual countries. The layman’s example is that most of us have a trade surplus with our employers, and deficits with retail outlets. It all balances out.
The US trade deficit is mostly balanced out by service (often not counted) and investment flows. The US could theoretically end most of its trade deficits if it balanced its budget, thus reducing demand for treasuries. However, that would come with other pitfalls. It would either entail tax increases, spending cuts, or both at the government level and it would then bleed into the standard of living of most Americans as foreign investment slowed down.
It doesn’t surprise me at all to see yields go up as foreigners invest less into the US as they get dinged sending goods here. So maybe that’s ironic…
True. And if you’re going to carve out oil sold to the us, shouldn’t you be carving out resources sold to Canada? Seems like a lopsided comparison
Agreeing with your larger point but on the other hand, Trump-voting districts with older industries probably have trade deficits, both with other American districts and especially internationally.
Yeah but this is the point, right? The guy thinks the US is still living in an era before it became a massive service economy
I'm sorry. As an American. The United States has no business treating Canada like some hostile foreign power. We're a grotesque country right now.
We are leaving the time when trust allowed trade agreements that went beyond the maximum minimum with the US. Trust allowed countries to make agreements with the US that had obvious potentials for exploitation, but overall they were followed to the greater benefit of both. Trust enabled that. Now the US has decided to break trust and countries know it. That lost premium means a major loss in value to both sides but ultimately the US will be the biggest looser because the other algorithm here is tit for tat. In a world economy, countries that cooperate will thrive and those that exploit will fail. We are seeing completely uneducated, emotion driven, economic policy play out.
Good for Canada, quite a shame the EU folded so easily
He'll be nullifying any agreement within two or three tantrums anyway, eventually we will learn and retaliate.
And maybe the US will learn again, that a great deal is something that people can rely on?
The guy still has like ~35% approval ratings according to every poll there is, and that’s after weekly displays of outright corruption from him and his family, and “winning” the same war dozens of times already with no end in sight. The number hardly even budged YTD.
You’re telling me that this country is capable of learning?
You say it like a 35% approval rating is a good thing. It is not.
That a third or more still support him seems crazy to me.
But it's an approval rating. Of the people surveyed. Who chose to reply.
A lot of extrapolations are made out of the 10 people who responded.
You do not believe in statistics as a discipline?
I don't think most polling qualifies as statistics, without providing info like selection criteria or number of respondents. Otherwise we'll walk right into another situation like when Trump won an election while polling in near last place.
Or maybe I want something a little more significant than "we asked around the newsroom, and 35% of fox news reporters approve of the current administration". Cool, thanks, but that's not helpful or even a useful datapoint.
> I want something a little more significant than "we asked around the newsroom, and 35% of fox news reporters approve of the current administration". Cool, thanks, but that's not helpful or even a useful datapoint.
The state of the art (which confirms this ~35% approval number) is far more rigorous than that.
Start with a meta-review of historical accuracy and transparency, eg: https://www.natesilver.net/p/pollster-ratings-silver-bulleti...
Details on methodology and sample size can be Googled, eg: https://poll.qu.edu/methodology/ , https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/07/24/ev... , https://www.google.com/search?q=Marquette+University+Law+Sch..., etc.
Sample size is less important than you might think, due to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binomial_proportion_confidence...
Still way too high.
35% of US voters is all you need to be President and control the Senate, effectively controlling the US government.
We'll see if that's true come the midterms. I have doubts Republicans can keep enough seats with that sort of approval, given it's much worse with independents, and the Republican candidates seem to be a lot weaker than their Democratic opponents in a number of key races, like Texas. Only thing I'm less sure of is the huge amount of Super PAC money Republicans have to spend on tight races.
It is lowest in history in this point of presidency apart from Nixon, who resigned at this point. That 30-35% is the floor, which won’t budge, likely because the hard core Maga Republicans have nowhere to go in US two-party system - which would be not just a surrender of long-held political beliefs, but a complete social death as well. This does not mean that the core Maga is very happy either, but they hope the movement continues after Trump so they can finally get the full Christian Nationalist Fascism they so desire.
I doubt that is going to happen. Trump is going keep the strings behind the party, fucking everybody hard, until finally he dies or otherwise implodes. What is left of American democracy when that happens is a whole another thing.
If you wanted a Russian puppet in the oval office, it would do exactly what Epstein's BFF Donald is doing. There are zero reasons to support anything Putin is doing (read: daily war crimes), however, the destruction from within in the US and EU is executed amazingly well.
The 65 percent approval rating from GOP voters right now says no, they are happy with immigration, culture war nonsense and trade chaos. Red states and rural areas would need to be targeted specifically and even then all interviews indicate those voters won’t consider choosing the other side, most of that GOP opposition will at best just not vote.
Thankfully 45% of people currently identify as independent so his approval among Republicans doesn't have the same impact you'd think it does.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/700499/new-high-identify-politi...
That’s good news to hear but the analysis in that article points out that many of these are people who supported Trump the third time(possibly in a row), after the rape trial finished and all the evidence of the first Trump term - maybe can’t put them all in the same bin but independent voters in the USA are not into long term thinking from all appearances, a slight decrease in gas prices would sway them the other way.
I understand how you feel I think you have to consider the lack of long term thinking is likely uniformly distributed among voters. Or said differently, if I read between the lines of what you're saying, I don't think dems are more capable of long term thinking. And even if they were, their failure modes are just as plentiful. Dems have failed to put forth a decent candidate in ages.
Speaking as an independent non-voter.
Hey no love lost here for mainstream Democrats but we have a first past the post national and state systems.
see independent voters polling don’t matter in the electiona since you don’t vote. /s
I'd vote if I could!
Some days I feel I could start a whole revolution against taxation without representation...
Not in this administration.
Not with 50%+ of the country supporting this administration.
Its the people that are the problem. These policies and politics will outcast Trump because middle Anerica and The South are filled with morons.
Luckily he does not enjoy anywhere close to 50% support
Disagree.
Leadership matters.
A different leader could take the country in a different direction - with the same voting base.
Eg an actual policy of isolationism instead of instigating multiple foreign conflicts.
And isolationism, how is that doing for any country that tried it?
If you understand isolationism with consistent non intervenism, then swiss has done pretty well. If you understand it as really shutting yourself off from the outside world with literally destroying bridges - then North Korea is not doing so well.
More bigots than morons. I’m folding American exceptionalism into bigotry along with all the usual aspects.
The real number has been stable, in the 30-35% range, since 2015. Show you can engage the issue seriously before calling most of the country morons.
> It’s the people that are the problem. These policies and politics will outcast Trump because middle Anerica and The South are filled with morons.
What a sad and tired take. Trump won both the electoral and popular vote. Discounting the opinions of over half the country as morons is exactly the type of behavior that got him elected.
As allegedly Stalin replied to a group of writers complaining that ordinary people do not understand culture, "I have no other people for you".
> Not with 50%+ of the country supporting this administration
That's not even close to an accurate number now. There are many sources e.g. (1)
It's a shame that people mostly learn the hard way, and forget easily. But that's not the support now.
1)
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-approval-falls-33-low...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3fRIleMK-8
> That's not even close to an accurate number now.
that wasn't even accurate on the day he got elected, considering a third of the country did not vote at all.
Trump believes everything on this planet is zero sum, and the only way you can benefit is if the other party hurts. His entire history on this planet betrays this, where he is an unreliable scumbag to everyone he has ever dealt with, to the point where the guy couldn't find vendors or a bank outside of Russia to deal with him. And then Americans said "this is the guy we should put in charge".
It is a particularly interesting position when the US is trying to counter China. The only hope the US had was an alliances with other Western-style nations, but instead it has been nothing but attacks and diminishing.
If only things were zero sum stick-in-bicycle meme decision making would benefit others
> It is a particularly interesting position when the US is trying to counter China.
The US put countering China way behind on its priority list, below "owning the libs" and settling old scores. I am convinced that if the Iran decapitation had worked like Venezuela, which seems to have been what they expected, then Cuba would have been next.
I am surprised the USA has not attacked Cuba yet. I am guessing the rundown on missile stocks has eliminated the possibility of a 100 percent air/navy campaign like they failed at in Iran.
Why should they?
Cuba is completely insignificant beyond some ideological value.
Why should they?
To get an easy win compared to Iran just before the midterms? Of course, it could end up in a mess, but it's a mess already anyway.
They've been farming the Cuba thing since the boomers were children. Every election there are bitter Floridian descendants of Cuban exiles to court. It would be insane for them to permanently resolve the issue, and any actual resolution would inevitably be a disappointment to them.
Russia doesn’t think so.
Because of the ideological value
Exactly. Cuba is a pain in the US politics since generations now. If Trump would solve it, that would boost him. But if it fails, with declared victory but significant partisan warfare afterwards - not so much.
It is unfortunately that the choices didn't have counter China in the list. It was status quo or trump. I wasn't happy with either option there.
And then greenland.
Cuba doesn't have oil.
The point is to prop up Putin.
> The point is to prop up Putin.
Attacking one of Russia's few allies and weapon suppliers is counterproductive to such a goal, even if higher oil prices also help the Russian state finances.
This ill-conceived, Kegsbreath-run operation depleted weapons stocks, gave enormous levels of intel on its systems (which both Russia and China are loving), burned through hundreds of billions in spend, and made Ameirca look like an impotent pathetic joke.
Yes, the Iran operation 100% served Russia and China. It could not have gone better for them.
And of course it helped Russia make hundreds of billions more on oil. Win win win.
> Yes, the Iran operation 100% served Russia and China. It could not have gone better for them.
China yes, Russia no.
> And of course it helped Russia make hundreds of billions more on oil. Win win win.
For this to be intentional, the USA would have needed to intend Hormuz to be closed, rather than surprised and upset by it.
(Not that it matters much, but estimates I see say about $50bn, which is closer to the destruction of Wildberries than it is to $100bn).
I think it is equally likely that Benny convinced the administration to attack Iran, emboldened by the 'success' in Venezuela.
If the goal of a presidency was to destroy the country one could not do a better job than trump.
"The only hope the US had was an alliances with other Western-style nations"
Maybe Trump bets on his great relations with Putin and Kim instead.
Negative sum, not zero sum.
Pity that for such an obvious fact that even peasants like me can easily see, the "elite" European political leaders are still playing ostrich.
No, not good for Canada. Free trade is optimal, even if its unilateral.
The EU should abolish their tariffs and let the clowns in the US do whatever they feel like.
Nope, the EU should use the trade bazooka against the US.
The trade bazooka was an empty threat. This is somewhat similar to the trillion dollar coin[1]. It's a tool used for negotiations, not a real thing. If the trade bazooka was real, wasn't this the best opportunity to use it? What else could it be saved for?
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillion-dollar_coin
the trade bazooka was made to threaten china, not the US. its just conveniently placed at the moment
You're not going to get free trade if it's unilateral, because you've then created an incentive for the other side to protect their own industries knowing you're not going to retaliate, while reaping the benefits of access to your market.
Unilaterally not hitting you head against the wall is bad, because you remove the incentive for the other side to stop hitting their head against a wall?
> while reaping the benefits of access to your market.
Huh, what? Trade is a win-win situation: you and your people benefit from imports, too.
The EU didn't really fold, they blew him off. It was just a bunch of "yeah sure Donny, here's a bunch of meaningless promises we have no ability or mechanism to actually enforce". For example they promised to buy a bunch of gas, but the EU has no mechanism to make companies or even member states buy gas.
The only real concession the EU made was just allowing Trump to tariff them at a certain rate, and not counter-tariffing back (with various escape clauses).
While the EU response certainly wasn't a feel-good display of chest thumping, I think it was somewhat effective. He was able to strut around and feel big, and they were able to move on.
The only reason the EU would really want to apply counter tariffs against the USA would be to either make a point, or because they are actually afraid that exports from the USA could outcompete EU products unless tariffed, but this just isn't really the case right now.
___________________
The only form of retailiation I think the EU should actually be pursuing is the equivalent of tariffs on US software. This is the area that the USA is a highly competitive 'exporter', and putting up barriers agaisnt these software services would be a good way to hurt the USA, and protect / stimulate domestic alternatives.
To add into what you said. EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) already affects the United States, though its impact varies depending on the sector. CBAM is big permanent change, and that will be rolled in smoothly below all this.
EU has carbon tax internally and they are rolling out CBAM to prevent "carbon exports" (manufacturing stuff outside EU and then importing those product without tax). CBAM is currently used directly some high-emission sectors: iron and steel, aluminum, fertilizers, cement, electricity, and hydrogen.
EU importers require granular data on the embedded emissions (both direct and indirect). US companies in these supply chains have had to overhaul how they track and verify carbon intensity down to the sub-supplier level to help their EU buyers comply with strict European reporting standards.
EU will gradually expand CBAM after allowing supply chains to adjust.
And then the Europeans suddenly discover that they cannot manufacture enough artillery shells and tanks to out-number the Russians.
> And then the Europeans suddenly discover that they cannot manufacture enough artillery shells and tanks to out-number the Russians.
Germany (by itself) is apparently out-producing the US artillery shell production.
* https://www.newsweek.com/germany-overtakes-us-in-ammunition-...
Russia's GDP is below that of Italy (and barely above Canada, who is in NATO):
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
If the Europeans really want to, they could produce a lot more by converting over to 'war mode'. Certainly they need to do more with current geopolitics, but there is no need to crank it to 11.
>if the Europeans really want to, they could produce a lot more by converting over to 'war mode'
As an Italian there's definitely been a perceptible shift due to the increase in defense spending. Leonardo now makes TV ads (something I had never seen before), they advertise on newspapers (...)
Off topic, but it's funny to me how the Leonardo TV ads basically skips over the defense part https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXytSNOt_0I
Note that GDP does not directly translate into a number of tanks and missiles produced. I doubt Italy has more weapon than Russia.
Of course, because Russia spends 7+% of its GDP on its military, and Italy 1.6%. It does say something about the relative capacity though. Russia probably cannot sustain this level of spending forever, and European countries could (continue) raising it if needed.
> Note that GDP does not directly translate into a number of tanks and missiles produced. I doubt Italy has more weapon than Russia.
Not wrong, but GDP is a rough metric of economic and industrial capacity. So if Italy wanted to, it could convert its economy to produce tanks and missiles at a similar rate as Russia is doing. And Italy is just one member of NATO:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_states_of_NATO
If the economic capacity is in "the service sector" it's going to be just about meaningless in a war.
yes all those guys selling drinks on the beach can just take a bus to the tank factory.
it doesnt, but it does speak to an ability to invest in tank production
dunno why youd want tanks and not drones though, when even russia's new tanks with anti-drone defenses can be taken out by 30ish drones
You are not very informed on the EU's artillery shell production capabilities.
If anything, the major gap is the EU's lack of cheap drone manufacturing, but even that is starting to make progress with help and integration from Ukraine.
> You are not very informed on the EU's artillery shell production capabilities.
> In 2025, Russia produced an estimated 7 million artillery shells,
vs.
> Germany has rapidly scaled up artillery ammunition production, led by defense giant Rheinmetall. Output targets have surged from roughly 70,000 shells per year prior to 2022 to a projected 1.1 million to 1.5 million rounds annually by 2027–2030,
so now vs. "projected" and Russia still heavily outnumbers the former Nazis.
Which is to say give me a fricking break, I live in the closest EU and NATO capital city to Southern Ukraine, I know my shit.
Rheinmetall's current output is 1.1 million per year, aiming to hit 1.5 by 2027 and continue to scale up from there. That is just one company in one country in the EU, though they are the largest one.
The EU also simply has way more capacity to scale up shell production than Russia does, and the EU is building up stockpiles while Russia uses up everything they make.
Idk, I think the europeans can do better than paying over 500 million dollars to manufacture none [0].
[0] https://www.propublica.org/article/general-dynamics-artiller...
Uhhh, we're not doing so hot there either. https://www.propublica.org/article/general-dynamics-artiller...
You are deluded, the EU is an industrial powerhouse compared to Russia, what's missing is just the political will
Please. Russia had an economy of the size of Italy.
And I said "had", because this was before Ukraine destroyed most of their oil plants, and refineries, and their navy, and their petrol fleet, and the online stores, and before they killed a big chunk of their male workforce. And before they have an increasing debt with China and NK that they will need to repay somehow.
At this point everybody knows that the Russian economy will not survive after the war is over and that the country most probably will split.
Europe can deal with a ruined post-Ukraine war Russia.
They would just stand some suffering, but for sure 500 millions of motivated people can build more and faster than 100 millions of a Russia tied by deliberate anti-efficiency rules build to please oligarchs. The only question is how much damage could Russia do, before Moscow and St Petersburg are reduced to ashes as retaliation if they dare to try the final solution.
The hybrid war is the real problem. Russia can sponsor still many street "Syrian" terrorist attacks in Sweden, or cause a train wreck here and there, or burn Malibu for basically peanuts. They can do this for years and years.
Not just software but online services. That would help us a lot and is safer anyway.
> and protect / stimulate domestic alternatives.
I really would love to see this, but the sad truth is that there are no real alternatives for a very big amount of software products. In the end, the eu residents will simply have to pay more for a lot of software products, and that's it :(
That's the initial impact, it's exactly the incentive that over time will create native competitors.
Yeah, there will be immediate pain but if EU competitors can spring up because the American software giants are disadvantaged it'll slowly erode the reliance on US's software.
Europe/EU are highly reliant on the US military and these issues are linked.
The EU has no real reliance on US military might. Russia has been shown to be a paper tiger and the EU can use Ukraine as a proxy to cripple Russia while keeping their hands relatively clean.
I wish you were right, but look at Ukraine's desperate requests for Patriot missiles and Switzerland letting the US screw them repeatedly to get F-35 and Patriot.
Patriots are a big issue now, but they are also for the US after the Iran war. You now also see European countries starting to European alternatives as a result (e.g. SAMP/T and IRIS-T). While these are also still low(er) volume, the EU controls its own destiny by switching to alternatives to US systems.
Sadly not.
Russia went into the war with armed forces that turned out as you say (possibly except the nukes, hard to tell unless they attempt to use one); the war forced them to develop substantial drone and anti-drone capabilities that the EU nations are not yet in a position to counter.
Yes and no. A lot of the drones are developed by Ukraine in cooperation with companies in EU countries and production facilities are being opened quite rapidly in European countries (e.g. VDL in NL, Innokas in Finland). The EU is pumping a lot of money into Ukraine and we learn a lot from Ukraine.
The EU would strongly prefer to have US military support, but does not fundamentally need it. In the miltiary domain, but also lots of other domains, the EU is using these fake promises they made to Trump as a mechanism to buy time while they quietly work on removing US dependencies, and reducing US leverage.
For what? Defense against Russia?
I suspect that if my country gave Putin what we give to the US - military bases where they can do whatever they please no questions asked, real-time intelligence access, unofficial favored supplier status for anything that might be control-relevant, quiet veto power over any national policy decision deemed "strategic" - then we wouldn't have to worry about invasion - from Russia anyway. Why invade what you already own?
I think that price is a little too steep, though. Not to mention that the US would then be at least as willing to topple governments/invade as Russia currently is.
Did not help Armenia for some reason
it wasn't russia that invaded armenia
Regarding the retaliation, I’m unsure who would be hurt more. There are very few ready alternatives to the MS office suite, and none with the close integrations like AD. Most corps run on Microsoft. If those contracts get slapped with tariffs they would become unmanageable to buy.
Then, because it isn’t on-premise anymore where you could just continue running without paying for the service contract you lose direct access to the product. So that might even mean whole companies going under.
The US sells software to the EU. To me is constantly amazing that US citizens and US gov thinks it can just pull the plug without consequence to itself.
You pull the plug the money stops rolling in. I don't know if you've ever tried to sell something vs buying something but buying is a ALOT easier than selling.
You can easily choose where to buy but choosing to sell is a lot trickier. Pull the plug on AI and the EU will switch to Chinese models. Trade negotiations and relations are very fragile and difficult to curate and maintain. Very easy to rip up.
You seem to ignore the fact that changes take time.
There are entire governments in the EU with workflows built around Microsoft products that have no real 1:1 alternatives. If a governmental procedure stipulates that a ministry uses Windows w/ Office365, it uses Windows w/ Office365, no room for an argument. If anybody pulls a plug here, the consequences will be unimaginable.
It's nice that a single German state has switched to LibreOffice, but the rest of Germany, or the remaining 26 countries might take years, if not decades, to certify and permit someone else's solution.
If the plug is fully pulled, the EU could confiscate some European Azure/Office365 servers and 'put the software on the market'. Windows is even easier, I'm sure in such a situation the EU would be happy to limit the restrictions on reverse engineering to block license verification. I'm sure that there are some hard drives on European territory with the full Windows source code as well.
France would like a word:
https://www.techradar.com/computing/windows/france-has-ditch...
There are so many things that can happen. Since tariffs are percentual, Microsoft could lower prices to avoid that companies will migrate to European alternatives.
In an all-out economic war, anything could happen. The source code of Microsoft products probably exists somewhere in Europe (since they have European offices) and definitely binaries, since it's run on European servers. Once nobody plays by the rules anymore, all bets are off.
That said, a trade war would hurt both badly and it would be an epic fail on the side of the US administration. (Since the EU would not start such a trade war by itself.)
If Europe does't buy gas from Russia then that leaves Qatar and the US. Qatar does sell a lot to Europe (hence you'll notice how "friendly" Europe is towards Qatar) but is vulnerable to instability in the straight of Ormuz.
The US are making a fortune on gas at the expense of Europe an it's not that the promise to buy gas is meaningless because unenforceable within Europe, it's that it was already happening in practice. And that makes Europe even more dependent on the US (while the complaint was that we could't buy gas from Russia and depend on them).
Norway, the North Sea via the UK and Algeria are right there as ready suppliers. All of which today supply more than Qatar. https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/infographics/where-does-t...
Not to mention current EU stated goals is to reduce consumption by 50% by 2030. Which is coincidentally pretty US and Russia imports combined sized, and timed pretty well with the expiration date of the EU/US trade deal.
Good graph that shows how imports from the US have exploded since Russia invaded Ukraine...
The UK is the same as the rest of Europe. They don't leverage their gas reserves and have a shambolic renewables and nuclear strategy (or lack thereof...)
UK has the seventh largest wind energy production per capita in the world and is 30% of their electricity and another 15% is nuclear. Have disagreements sure, but to say they lack a strategy says more about you than them.
There must be an argument there somewhere, maybe, who knows...
Russia killing hundreds of EU citizens should be enough to stop buying gas from them.
Yes, the EU does rely on buying US gas as an important part of its energy mix. But that is true independent of whatever deal the EU struck with Trump. The EU simply does not have control of who its gas importers buy from (other than sanctions)
But this is also why the EU is aggressively pursuing and building up alternatives, including investments in Canada's ability to export LNG, but also buildouts of solar, wind, and batteries.
Solar and batteries come with their own dependencies on China, but at least those are a different sort of dependency than fossil fuels. If China stops exporting solar / batteries, the ones we have will still keep functioning for decades while alternatives are built up.
> But this is also why the EU is aggressively pursuing and building up alternatives
Unfortunately, this couldn't be further from the truth:
https://cleantechnica.com/2026/07/12/head-of-iea-roasts-euro...
Here are some specific numbers:
https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2025/06/many-building-r...
The EU is heavily investing in renewables, but mainly to phase out coal rather than gas, and it's absolutely not electrifying its economy.
You can see this in the EU Emissions Trading System. It covers about 40% of all emissions, but leaves out buildings (dominated by gas) and transportation (dominated by oil). Since electricity is covered, it actually encourages oil and gas over electricity.
Furthermore, member states like Germany are resistant to taxing gas higher than electricity:
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/08/17/germany-warns-...
Despite the wars in Ukraine and Iran, gas is still encouraged over electricity in many European countries.
China and some other Asian countries have adopted the opposite approach. They aim to replace oil and gas by all possible means, including coal (although it's not the preferred choice).
While I agree I wish this would happen faster, it certainly is happening, and it's happening pretty quickly. Saying it "couldn't be further from the truth" is just silly hyperbole.
There is plenty of gas in the EU; we decided that it was undesirable to extract. Honestly pathetic; strategic autonomy and energy security is much more important.
Yes. Strategically Europe keeps getting things wrong while, e.g., China keeps getting thingss right: they leverage their domestic coal reserves while going all in on nuclear and renewable, and they do it comprehensively with battery tech, solar panels tech, and EVs, too, as you can't lower dependency on foreign oil if all your cars run on petrol. But in fairness they didn't have the lobby of a powerful "legacy" auto industry (another textbook case of innovator's dilemma?)
The EU also stopped enforcing its laws (like DMA and GDPR) against US tech companies.
They paused some investigations while the negotiations happen, but most of those are back on track now.
I agree with your top-level-ish reply - the response by the EU was certainly smart and there are some really interesting things going atm that will loosen the dependency on the US. But just for _feel good_ I would've liked at least a bit more of a fight.
But re:DMA see the most recent Apple app store post on here. Kinda feels like the EU folded too easily there as well.
We still haven't seen what the EU's reaction is to Apple's latest app store stunt.
This would not be the first time that Apple unilaterally claimed something was DMA compliant, and then the EU had to come out and say "no, that's clearly not"
“The Commission welcomes the changes made by Apple to its commercial terms,” commented a spokesperson for the European Commission. This announcement, the spokesperson continues, is “the result of close dialogue between the Commission and Apple,” after the tech giant was found in April 2025 to have breached the rules of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and ordered to take the necessary corrective measures. In light of these developments and the changes to be introduced, “the Commission will monitor Apple’s effective implementation of the new conditions.”
https://www.eunews.it/en/2026/08/18/tracking-and-new-commerc...
Not sure how credible this is though
You mean how they fined Google for 890 million under the DMA on July 23, 2026? Or how the Dutch AP just fined Uber for 825 million a few days ago under the GDPR?
The very fine you mentioned should have already been issued in March according to https://www.heise.de/news/Stopp-von-Google-Strafe-Schwere-Vo... (Heise is one of the most reputable German IT news platforms).
Apple recently received a very favorable settlement instead of serious fines and enforcement actions for blatantly refusing to follow the DMA for the entire time it was in force.
In November 2025, they were working on gutting GDPR; I don't know what exactly actually passed so far.
> The only real concession the EU made was just allowing Trump to tariff them at a certain rate
No. Van der Leyen also promised EU investments into the USA. This is betrayal as well; that money should go into EU countries. Or Canada.
That was kind of an estimated sum of investments european companies planned to make anyway. It is not like eu started to build up im us.
True, though the prudent move would be to stop investing in the US entirely
That's what I was talking about with the false promises.
The EU has no mechanism to make those investments in the USA, and no mechanism to force any member state or company to make investments.
They literally just made up a number and said "oh yes, we'll make a bunch of investments" with zero intention of doing anything to make it happen.
These countries need to grow a spine and make violating American copyright legal, or at least remove their anti circumvention laws.
No need to make violating American copyright legal. Just remove their equivalent of the DMCA.
I can't understand why there isn't a single country that did that.
I think that's how you get the US to declare war :P
Meanwhile in Belgium (EU), company owners are recovering millions from the US government, possibly up to billion dollars for all of Belgium.
Don't assume EU is stupid.
https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2026/08/18/voka-invoerheffingen...
No, not good for Canada. Free trade is optimal, even if its unilateral.
Canada should abolish their tariffs and let the clowns in the US do whatever they feel like.
Yanis Varoufakis - aside from being radically left and becoming the finance minister in Greece after their financial crisis hit - is a professor in game theory and economics.
He did a pretty good explanation of the difference between theory and practice in his Rest is Politics Leading podcast interview recently :).
Sticks in my mind and well worth listening.
I guess it has a little to do with your goals. Optimal trade economically or avoiding giving something that looks like a win to this type of politicians with the goal of avoiding re-electing trump. I don’t know what science say here.
Tarriffs will hurt your existing industries, they will lose sales/revenue.
Since you are getting hurt you play tit-for-tat to get the other to knock it off.
So you add export taxes to items they care about (oil/fertilizer/...) and compensate the losses incurred by existing industries.
You also add tarriffs on items that have alternatives, like alcohool.
Maybe add tarriffs on items with elastic prices, say 100% tarriff on digital services. Software services will have to adjust prices so they end up the same after tarriffs since few people will accept youtube or netflix doubling in price.
This hurts both countries but will get a result - either free trade or no trade.
In the meanwhile, Trump's entourage has derivative bets on this and take massive proffits shorting everyone. For them, this is all massively profitable.
Import tariffs and export tariffs have approximately equal influence on your economy. That's known as Lerner Symmetry. (A very narrow version of this can be proven in a mathematical sense, but the empirical effect is broader.)
For bilateral trade it doesn't matter much whether country A imposes import tariffs or country B exposes export tariffs.
Basically, the whole talk about retaliatory tariffs is silly.
> Basically, the whole talk about retaliatory tariffs is silly.
Why?, retaliatory - in response to US, tarriffs - taxes, whether on export or import, as you noted, doesnt matter much. Effect depends on who needs to either sell or buy the tarrifed items the most.
it’s a repeating negotiation so that’s not always true, this tit for tat approach may work to make the US lower tariffs.
am curious, what is it you think they are really negotiating?
renewal of usmca and trade agreements
In a vacuum or thought experiment.
China put tariffs specifically on the sectors that voted for Trump and depended on sales to China.
When the other party is not playing the same game, or not playing in fairness, then the best game theoretical move is to cease cooperation and retaliate.
nah
I’m interested to see if this spurs other countries to push back on this administration. Once you get a couple of countries to collectively stand firm is when things take a turn. Bullies can only push for so long
I suspect that instead of treating the US as a bully, and pushing back, we are treating the US as a troll, and just looking away instead.
We'll go trade with other countries and stop giving the troll the attention it craves.
The Grey Rock Method, but at the nation state level.
You could also try a bowl of mashed potatoes on Donald’s head.
This was one of the very embarrassing things that happened to Donald as a boy, done by Freddy Trump (his late older brother), when everyone had enough of him.
What Canada is doing is turning to trade with other countries. It is the main solution we have to this issue. It is a long game, but necessary.
Ganging up on the US isn't likely to work well.
Because the US is such a good market at some point “caving” makes it a good deal
Countries have their own self interest in mind
Take the USMCA - Canada and the US at times team up against Mexico and then the pendulum swings, line item by line item - no one has anyone’s back and they all have short memories
A deal with the US when others turns away from them is still a good deal
Pushing back against a US that is at this point economically and militarily dominant does nothing. It might push for cooperations outside the US-sphere.
> It might push for cooperations outside the US-sphere.
BRICS is just that for oil.
The US is not indefatigable. As of March 2026 the nine largest foreign holders of US Treasury securities are Japan, UK, China, France and Canada.
All nations the US is jerking around. If they dump bonds US in big trouble. Oh, and the US is almost $40T in debt.
Yeah, but that's a suicide pact. In order to sell us debt at a loss, they have to take a loss.
Are they still dominant? They can't even win their war against Iran. And everyone is slowly moving away from the dollar. The US as world hegemon is counting its days.
Hasn’t won against Iran.
Is out of ammo.
Cannot win against Russia in the proxy war with Ukraine.
Cannot match China with their long term energy plans.
Has debt that explodes
Has a president that sells early access to his tweets for 100k$ a year ; insider trading in the open.
The USA are not in a good posture right now.
saying US is fighting Russia in a proxy war is giving it credit it does not deserve
*100k per month
> Cannot win against Russia in the proxy war with Ukraine.
Ukraine existing even with Trump waging war against Iran negates this argument
It won't. This isn't the first time Canada has had to stand alone against Trump while the rest of the world goes along to get along.
To be fair as a percentage of exports, Canada (and Mexico, in different ways) is at a completely different level of economic integration than pretty much any other country. We have no choice but to take a unique stand. That being said, we are so lucky to have Carney at this moment. Canada hasn’t exactly had flexible, informed, and eloquent leadership in a long time that has been willing to think and work for the long term.
Very interesting speech and Q&A from Prime Minister Carney on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dx9ExdjaREg .
He provides some details about the last minute demands that the US made including restricting Canada's ability to trade with other countries. He also refers to the US signature as being written in "pencil".
This link to the same video skips the first few minutes of staring at an empty podium before he walks in: https://youtu.be/Dx9ExdjaREg?t=217
My favourite part was the face he made when he was asked about Lutnick's last minute involvement potentially changing the negotiations.
The words were mostly diplomatic. The expression was not.
Nice to see them putting up a fight. Though I assume this will cause pain for everyone.
One note: aren't these sentences strange - like a series of half-thoughts? Especially the 2nd paragraph.
> Our government understood, before many, that America is altering all its trade relationships. Putting tariffs on its closest allies and charging for access to its vast market. > > We have worked in that context. To strike a fair deal that would provide the best access to the U.S. market and greater certainty to Canadian businesses and workers.
> Though I assume this will cause pain for everyone.
Yes, but the pain is likely unavoidable. The alternative is much more pain, but slightly later/more spread out, from repeatedly giving in.
Ever seen the Twilight Zone episode "It's a Good Life"? It's a tough situation when your opponent is an all-powerful preteen. No win scenario: perpetually give in to childish temper tantrums and everyone is worse off forever, or suffer the consequences of opposing the child.
I've mentioned that episode as an analogy to current affairs to anyone who will listen.
Yeah, quite likely. It is surely for the best to stand up
Actually its the opposite. The pain of "giving in" is limited to specific Canadian industries and powerful stakeholders with a LOT of political influence. In the broadest terms, Canada's economy grows rapidly if they give in.
Explain how “Canada’s economy grows rapidly” if we accept a bad deal from a stronger economy. The goal for Canada is a return to the free trade agreement covering ~98% of goods that existed before this chaos, which allowed for close integration and long term planning for businesses on both sides of the border. Rolling over and dying gets us further away from that goal.
Well, a lot of the things people lump into the bad deal category are things like allowing us competition in our protected oligopoly industries: banking, telecoms, airlines, dairy, poultry…
Having those industries subsumed by the US would help us how?
Further, dairy and poultry are an interesting one. Do you think the US is asking us to eliminate supply management? Because you should know they aren't. They are asking us to keep it, but also to allow the US to dump their subsidized excess production here. How do you think that plays out?
But let's imagine that dairy became free trade (which is not at all what Trump is looking for, btw): Imagine that Canadian farmers, much like New Zealand farmers, make a product more efficiently than the US and start taking the US market? How do you imagine that plays out? Hint: It yields new protectionism, because the US can only win in every area.
There is no good play here but waiting for this pedo bag of shit and his administration of conmen and pedophiles (like that greaseball Nutlick) to be gone. At the same time removing all dependencies on the US.
> Having those industries subsumed by the US would help us how?
So is your position that only Canadian firms should be allowed to operate in Canada in general? Foreign competition helps us because then we benefit from further specialization and trade which increases everyone's standard of living.
> Imagine that Canadian farmers, much like New Zealand farmers, make a product more efficiently than the US and start taking the US market? How do you imagine that plays out? Hint: It yields new protectionism, because the US can only win in every area.
Well, who else benefits is consumers who get to purchase products of higher quality, convenience, and affordability. Also employees of the dairy sector who face higher competition from firms bidding up their labour. Investors, who have more investment opportunities and therefor higher yield. Government and entitlement recipients who benefit from tax revenues from these incomes and investments.
> So is your position that only Canadian firms should be allowed to operate in Canada in general? Foreign competition helps us because then we benefit from further specialization and trade which increases everyone's standard of living.
When you are 1/10th the size of your neighbour, this generally doesn't work to your benefit. Every integration has led to the hollowing out of Canada. NAFTA cum USMCA has been a catastrophic mistake for Canada, and we're so deep down that well that loads of idiots wants us to dig even deeper.
Right now the only rational action is starting the six month expiration on USMCA. It not only was always a bad deal, the compromises we made for it stay while the US tries to hollow out even more industry.
Fuck that.
It's a transcription of a spoken speech. The periods between connected clauses are just where Mark Carney paused for a moment.
Ah! I was not aware that it was a transcription.
Yes, I had the thought that it sounded a lot like speech.
Thanks.
Still. Many of those periods. Should be commas.
The party line for why the US tariffs are bad is that the US tariffs are bad for US customers and won’t hurt the US exporting countries.
Why won’t the same logic apply to Canadian tariffs?
No, it’s just written as speech.
If Alice and Bob strike a deal then Alice must be confident that an acceptable subset of her interests are met and that Bob will stick to the deal.
If Bob shows evidence of not sticking to deals, there's little point in Alice striking any deal.
Alice=US, Bob=Others.
Won’t work out well for either side, namely citizens and leadership aside.
Wearing my forecasting hat…
Canada holding $200 billion in USA treasuries, one of the largest exporters of oil into the USA, and integrated supply chains for everyday goods. A fast and painful price shock is coming for every average American.
Canada has and will continue to be very dependent on the USA. No amount of new trade partners can change the fact that the largest economy in the world is a 2-hour trip down the road while everyone else is an ocean apart. This has a risk for long-term price pain for decades.
Australian beef is cheaper than Canadian beef, in Canada, the ocean is not the obstacle.
I don’t know offhand what the price of beef is generally these days (I am a vegetarian).
Generally speaking, capital and commerce steer towards efficiency. Goods from Australia will always be “less efficient” than goods crossing between Canada and the USA and Mexico due to geography.
The only way to make up for that difference is if goods are dramatically cheaper to produce (i.e China) to make up for the geographical barriers.
While it may work for beef, it can’t work for everything. So, Canada is generally stuck with the USA until it can find ways to export/import efficiently from other countries, and some things, like produce, can never work.
canadian beef is expensive in canada because canadian beef producers can make a bigger buck selling to the US
I wonder what would happen if Canada taxed electricity exports to the US, and used the money to directly subsidize other exported goods the US applies tariffs to?
> taxed electricity exports
it is easy to tax exports, but this makes the export less profitable (for the entity making that export). Unless you mean the producer raises prices to cover the new tax - in which case, the export is now more expensive, and less of it gets exported.
It doesn't really help with the tariff situation much in any case - a political problem requires a political solution (such as reciprocal tariffs). Both sides hurt, and there's no good outcome.
Attack dog Doug Ford threatened this last time and the Americans absolutely freaked out. It’s probably still a valuable nuclear option.
> less of it gets exported
Depends whether demand is flexible or not.
Harsh, but same for oil and potash. Other minerals too.
Oil and potash are made in provinces that have had their voter bases successfully propagandized by US Republican interests. They refused to get on-side at a political level.
Yeah, but export taxes are a federal responsibility. The fact that these provinces are irrelevant for the Liberals politically is those provinces' exact liability here.
If there's any way to swing the "referendum" in October in a very bad direction it would be to do this.
Right now Alberta and Saskatchewan are not suffering at all (2% of exports affected) from Trump's tariffs.
This is by design.
He (or the "smarter" people he surrounds himself with) is attempting to drive a wedge in Canadian unity.
Danielle Smith is, btw, totally onside with playing this to her advantage to get things.
Export tax, as just as it might be in these circumstances, would be used as pretext for wholesale foreign interference and domestic disruption on a level we have never seen in this country. It would end up being a profound self-own
This is such a Reddit opinion.
If you are in Alberta or Saskatchewan, the government is decided before your election is done. There is no Senate, like in the US, to balance your needs vs others.
Despite this unbalance, there is a clear majority of Albertans who are anti-independence. (I agree that the government, run by a radio entertainer is shameful and disgusting.)
im in alberta and want an oil export tax that brings albertan exports up to market oil prices. match it to brent crude
this is consistently a self criticism in alberta that we arent actually getting our money's worth from our oil
> the government is decided before your election is done
Speaking of "Reddit opinion".
It might be good to tax exports and use the proceeds to subsidize Canadian consumers. This should snuff out the dependence on export to US pretty fast with little harm to Canadian companies.
The US would then just stop importing that electricity and funnel the power in from domestic sources. The electricity comes in from Canada because it’s cheap, not because the US can’t make electricity. Canada would shoot itself in the foot with this move.
You just outlined what would be the purpose of Canada doing this - to cause power prices to go up in the US.
Yes, but at the cost of Canadian businesses losing revenue
Depends on how easily the Canadian electricity can be replaced. The market is pretty tight right now.
yes, any options that are all upsides with no downsides are already part of the status quo
Where would the US be without cheap electricity?
It has been shown time and time again that the only thing the US administration respects is brutish headbutting, so I cannot blame the Canadian government for responding with such a stance. It is unfortunate for everyone though that it is happening. Ultimately, these tariffs just tax the consumer for no real gain on either side. I think I speak for many when I say 2028 cannot come soon enough.
A few months prior to the midterms is exactly the right time for this sort of action. If the voters keep seeing prices increase because of Trump's tariffs, it increases the odds that the republicans will lose the legislative branch and will be able to act as a check on Trump's power. Ideally some other countries will follow suit.
This will cause some short term pain for Canada, but hopefully they'll have a less insane trading partner after November.
Unfortunately I think the only usable big lever we have as Canadians -- wine/beer liquor imports and people choosing to restrict personal travel to the US -- has already been used. We cannot and will not exercise energy or potash restrictions. And import tariffs are unlikely to be substantially impactful enough for Americans to notice enough that it alters their decisions at the ballot box.
I would however urge my fellow Canadians to continue to or start boycotting goods from the US and travel to there, generally.
And likely encourage Americans to come visit here. Come ski here this winter. You're more than welcome here.
Reciprocity, if well designed, automatic and generalized, is a great diplomacy tool.
Politicians tend to not want to do things that display them as directly responsible for eroding their support base’s quality of life.
Art of the deal strikes again.
This administration has a thing for being really vicious with the closest allies.
It really feels strange, odd, yet unsurprising that the US is going from a globalist leadership to selfish nationalism.
Its easier since they have no defenses up and lots of valuables are in reach. It makes sense if you are that ethically challenged.
Trump projects his greed and selfishness onto everyone else. So doesn't understand that there can be such a thing as a win-win relationship.
I think you are ignoring the situation of a WIN-win relationship where one party is winning much more at the other party's expense. Just because it may be net positive for both countries that doesn't mean that it's a fair arrangement. The excuse that the smaller winner is still technically winning is not a good excuse against pushing for a more fair deal.
In what way was the US not the big winner already? Canada bought all sorts of military equipment from the US, followed 99.9% of US foreign policy, produced tons of raw materials for the US economy and freely traded it for finished goods and consumables, contributed to many US wars. Canada gave US priority in pretty much every international trade and political matter and even bandwagoned onto many US laws.
Literally the only losing move was to mess with our relations to them.
That just sounds like greed. It's not enough to be winning, I need to be winning as much if not more than everyone else.
You must have been living under a rock if you didn't notice how much did the US has thrived in the globalist world, and how much did it thrive more than the rest of its allies.
Where is Trump pushing for a "more fair" deal? State what is his metric and demonstrate it is "fair" for both sides.
Show us it isn't just lies and bad faith.
It is a common theme in his speeches on tariffs.
Sure, in the same way a child tries to invoke unfairness when they don't get their way. Do you really fall for this?
No, you don't understand: what exactly is "unfair" and what "fair" alternative is he proposing? And show us how it is fair for both sides.
That's not going to happen. These people are not competent.
Yeah, but I want the suckers who still defend them to put up or shut up.
Listen to the speeches.
Wait, how is he not right? /s
It's absolutely fair to count how much lumber and oil and cars you're importing-exporting while ignoring how much services in technology, IT, space, software, cloud, finance, etc, you're exporting. /s
> the US is going from a globalist leadership to selfish nationalism.
It’s worse than that. This doesn’t suit the US. It suits Trump (or at least, that’s what his addled mind thinks).
The US doesn’t have allies; it has interests.
Very good yesterday, very bad today. I understand completely why nations are not eager to bargain with a petulant child
The problem is more long lasting. The world cannot accommodate 180 degree turns every 4 years in Washington.
So anybody that will follow, regardless of the person's policies won't matter fully, as that person itself will be replaced 4-8 years later.
> So anybody that will follow, regardless of the person's policies won't matter fully, as that person itself will be replaced 4-8 years later.
That is the fundamental problem. The only way out, is to make changes to the constitution to specifically prohibit the executive branch from having any of this power to arbitrarily change things on a whim. That is the only way international peer could in the future trust an agreement made with the USA.
As long as the US feels it is ok to sign an agreement and immediately violate it, nobody in their right mind will bother to negotiate any future agreements. Which is not a good state to be in.
It's not only the power structure, it's also the flawed democracy that allows gerrymandering and can only have 2 parties. It's the oligarch controlled media. It's the legalised corruption.
Winner-takes-all democracies do tend to have only 2 parties.
Very few “democracies”—a term that is more strained the more the structure of the political system structurally disenfranchises rather than represents views in the electorate—are as winner-take-all as the US, combining a strong Presidential system with FPTP voting, and basically none of any significance has as strong of a duopoly as the US.
Canada typically elects 5 parties, though the Greens, NDP, and Bloc are typically sub-50 in a 338 seat house.
Trump is using a few very specific laws. Congress could replace them if it were functional, and not ossified by Senate rules sometime allowing even 1/3 + 1 vote bloc a blocking veto.
That won't solve anything. Congress already has this power they just abdicated it to the Executive. The only fix is better voters electing better people into Congress. -- good luck with both of those. The US is cooked.
No, it’s not good enough, you need a better system. Like in Switzerland
The Los Angeles metropolitan area has more people that Switzerland.
Population aside, there's no system that fixes what's broken in the US in the 21st century.
Trump, sadly, is the symptom of deeper structural ills that have been building in America for decades.
Congress moves a lot slower, though. Congress isn't going to change tariffs every 24 hours. It takes a lot longer to get anything through Congress.
I mean, you still have the "every 4 years", or worse, "every few months". It's not at the pace that Trump changes things, though.
True. But a fundamental reshaping of the laws of the U.S. (who gets to set economic policy for example) could help.
In short, attenuate executive power.
At least the timing of the turns is predictable... I imagine working with countries with snap elections is harder, especially when they have trouble forming a government.
You might think. The UK would be the most prominent example and in fact has been a much more predictable and consistent trading and negotiating partner than the USA
The UK hasn't really changed, regardless of who's in charge, in 20 years. Because it's mostly run by the state and not by the politicians.
In case you hadn't noticed, within the last 20 years the UK made an enormous constitutional change by leaving the EU.
That is the one change, and it hasn't resulted in the thing people actually were voting for (but couldn't): less immigration. Because the state says we must just import 750k people a year, so that's that.
Made by the people rather than the politicians- the mainline politicians all thought it would/wanted it to fail- they just thought they’d get a boost from catering to a disaffected minority.
But no government has reversed that step.
Yeah but that step itself was a dramatic change within said 20 year timeframe
You've probably noticed, people like this like to adjust the goalposts.
You didn’t say it and it may not occur to you, but you are correct, the UK is among the many sham democracies, which is arguably the primary objective of “democracies”; an illusion supported by a concept called choice supportive bias, i.e., if you believe the outcome of something was due to your own action, choice, or agency you’re prone to accept it, defend it, not question it, and ignore its detrimental effects.
It’s a rather diabolical form of control, democracy. “You have fake choices and you like … nay, you love what you choose”, quite literally. You have to love it, because you have to believe it’s true. And that’s where they latched onto your mind.
It’s quite ingeniou.
> The UK would be the most prominent example and in fact has been a much more predictable and consistent trading and negotiating partner than the USA
European here: Oh hell no. The Brexit breakup drama was years of chaos with each of the braindead Prime Ministers somehow managing to make things worse.
It still is.
We still aren't doing border checks on EU imports.
Still, Boris Johnson wasn't as bad as Trump.
That's quite a take.
The EU-UK negotiations were mired in issues of EU maximalism; attempting to force each PM to agree a worse deal knowing not agreeing to it would cause short term pain for that PMs political situation. Its quite the thing that the UK managed to hold on as much as it did.
The UK was on the back foot in all negotiations having been forced into the Brexit outcome.
For all the nonsense printed in the UK and Continental presses, the UK had a surprisingly consistent position through the entire thing with clear threads of staff and policies still running to today.
There were no real negotiations, and there were never going to be. This has always been painfully obvious to anyone with even the slightest interest in EU foreign relations. The options on the table have always been the same:
You can be like Norway and join the EEA: full access to the single market, but having to make a financial contribution, accepting most EU laws, and with free movement of people. You get an exemption on some laws, but you don't get a say in any of the rules of the single market.
You can be like Switzerland and join the EFTA: partial access to the single market (notably not the banking sector), still have to contribute, only have to follow EU laws when it comes to trade, and still free movement of people.
You can be like Turkey: a customs union meaning no tariffs apply to EU trade, but you have to apply EU tariffs on all other trades and have no say over them.
You can be like Canada: a comprehensive free-trade deal which covers the majority of goods, but it means having to follow EU standards and requirements without having a say in them, and it probably won't cover services.
The EU was never going to give every Briton a magical gold-shitting unicorn, no matter how much the UK was going to plead and beg for it. It was more than happy to negotiate a deal on any of the options like those above, but it was up to the UK to decide what Brexit was going to look like.
But the Brexiteers promised the voters they could have their cake and eat it - "Brexit means Brexit", after all. Everyone invented their own personal idea of a Brexit, and the various interpretations were always going to be fundamentally incompatibly with each other! The negotiations went so horrible because the UK had absolutely no idea what it wanted, and any option was going to be wildly unpopular as it did both too much and too little at once. And all of that is before you take Northern Ireland into consideration, where the wrong move would result in a literal civil war...
Brexit wasn't a negotiation. It was a therapy session to help the UK find itself.
The EU position was consistent from even before the referendum: Either in or out of the single market, no cherry picking.
Each PM in the UK's neverending parade gained power by telling their electorate "I have this genius plan that'll totally let us cherry pick" only to be deflated when the EU held to its clearly stated position.
The problem with Brexit was that the Brits wanted something that was never on the table, they voted for Brexit under false pretenses and then got mad when they couldn't get what they wanted.
>the UK had a surprisingly consistent position through the entire thing
Please state the official "consistent" position regarding the main problem caused by your own decision to leave: the Irish border.
What?
"Forced into the Brexit outcome"
Cameron stepped down after he shat the bed, every PM was a Tory.
And yeah, the position was consistent. Before it was 'we could have all the benefits of being in the EU, with none of the down sides'. We could have soft Brexit, or the less popular hard Brexit.
Teresa Mays position was "Brexit means Brexit" and non of the others had a clue either. Because they promised everything to everyone. In the event we got a harder Brexit than the hardest Brexit discussed before the vote.
So if you want to say the UK was consistent, I say fuck you to the civil servants that consistently ignored the conversation prior to the vote.
No, why would that be?
That's the reality of most mature democracies from UK to Germany to Italy.
If anything, that makes change slower and based on coalition consensus, not a single winner-take-all individual mood.
Which means that there isn't much to "work" as previous arrangements keep holding and they hardly change.
I would never exchange our democracy for a king electing one like in US, Turkey or Russia.
I'd rather have our democracies slower, the governments more unstable, but representative.
Deliberative and hopefully self-stabilising. Real directional change happens over the span of a decade, not a few months. All arms of government (including non-kingship executive) brought to a rough consensus of choice and consequences.
Countries realise that trade agreements are too important for politics.
They are usually negotiated by a nation's crack team of experts. America just does not take any of this seriously anymore.
But we’re talking 180 degrees every… 2 weeks?
> So anybody that will follow, regardless of the person's policies won't matter fully, as that person itself will be replaced 4-8 years later.
There is only one chance the US has - they need to do what us Germans were forced to post-1945, rearchitect everything.
The US and UK are the only major countries that didn't undergo some sort of revolution, war or other reset of their constitution and legal systems and it shows everywhere.
If we Europeans (or anyone else) are supposed to ever trust the US again, we demand they properly fix their shit and prevent another madman's rise for good.
I fear this is just the beginning, I’ve seen nothing to say the voting American public are any less into divisive politics than they have been for the last decade
[edit autocorrect changed divisive to decisive]
Americans absolutely love winner-takes-all narratives. They love it and they dread our "beta" democracies that cannot achieve anything.
They'd rather fall into Russian models of government where a single person can promise you the world and you give it the power to do so, rather than bother with things like "compromise" or "representation".
Re-electing somebody who openly attacked the institutions, instead of taking what happened on Jan 6th as a wake up call is the clear sign.
That's going to take a level of responsibility and statesmanship that the Democrats haven't shown in a long time.
Why do I single out the Democrats? Because after Trump, they're going to have the first chance to fix this so that it can't happen again.
You do realise that Germany had a shiny new constitution, and then went on to elect that Austrian painter. And that's after the prior new and shiny constitution leading into ww1
Afghanistan had a new constitution and legal system when the US pulled out.
As a Brit, my take away is that having a nicely laid out constitution doesn't matter if you don't have the culture there to back it up. The US did manage to deal with one term of Trump, so that's something.
Germany came into being in 1871, and was in essence a monarchy until 1918. The Weimar Republic was its first attempt at a proper democracy, and it included an explicit "in case of emergency, we can revert back to totalitarianism" clause. It was a democracy with a giant built-in escape hatch - which as we all know was immediately used by a certain Austrian painter to turn it into a dictatorship.
Germany's first two constitutions quickly failed because they weren't democratic enough. The US constitution - despite its obvious flaws - has somehow managed to make it 250 years without causing huge issues, but it is now becoming quite clear that there should probably be a revision to prevent another giant mess like the current one from happening.
> The US did manage to deal with one term of Trump, so that's something.
Trump caused a lot of suffering and damage even in his first term, his second term (especially "thanks" to DOGE) was orders of magnitude worse.
A good democracy can survive one direct hit, maybe two, but anyone with a working brain cell left can clearly see the cracks in the foundation one needs to exploit to become President - and there will be such exploitation attempts, unless by a huge wonder the next President will be a Democrat, have a majority in both chambers of Congress and prosecutes everyone involved in the Trump administrations.
"That's like a toddler with a harpoon. There's a toddler wandering around in that office with a harpoon." The Thick of It s4e2.
"He's so dense that light bends around him"
Its nice to see some backbone, but the challenge for Canada is that it’s broadly in a weak negotiating position here. Generally speaking Canadian companies need access to the US market a lot more than US companies need access to the Canadian market.
One would think so, but is that really true? Some numbers I just got:
- the US imports 60-70% of its oil from Canada
- 100% of the natural gas
- 85% of energy imports
- 25% of Uranium
- 20% of all mineral imports, ahead of China
- the Great Lakes hold >80% of the USA's fresh water
- patrolling the almost 9000km border is mostly up to Canada
Despite the size disparities, they run close to a trade equilibrium: US exports $420B, imports $450B. There is a lot on the line for the US.
>- the US imports 60-70% of its oil from Canada
In context, this only applies to oil that the US imports. That number means that of the oil that the US imports, 60-70% of it comes from Canada. The US currently produces more oil than any other nation. Your note should read "the US imports 60-70% of the oil that it imports from Canada"
- 100% of the natural gas
As mentioned above, this means that US imports of natural gas come exclusively from Canada. The US currently produces more natural gas than any other nation too. Your note should read "100% of the natural gas that the US imports comes from Canada"
It makes sense that Canada is sole source for imported natural gas since that is a product that is most efficiently transported in pipelines, like crude oil.
The way your numbers are framed seems to me to imply that the US is a net importer of oil and natural gas when in fact we began to ramp up exports of oil and natural gas (and coal) in 2006-2008 time period. Those exports helped the industry remain a dominant political force and provided a lot of seed money for the corruption that we have seen in the US since.
And Canada has also been passing up an absolutely enormous opportunity for industrial growth by spending generations supporting American industry by remaining a primary resources economy.
... by choice/design of its own leadership :-(
Man, I remember watching the '88 election debate as a young teen. So many people were saying this then. Look at us now.
Notably, none of the goods you just mentioned about (energy imports, uranium, potash, etc.) have had tariffs applied by the Trump regime because they know all this. And it would be political suicide to apply an export tax on them.
No, instead the Trump tariffs have specifically targeted the regions of Canada that a) elect left of centre governments and/or b) have manufacturing economies.
So Ontario's auto sector, BC's forestry, and Quebec's aluminum and aerospace sectors.
Meanwhile Alberta and Saskatchewan -- which have compliant quite honestly pro-Trump governments -- have only 2% of their exports currently impacted by tariffs.
It has the look of an attempt at regime change, masquerading as economic policy.
This is true somewhat, but keep in mind the 50% tariffs aren’t on all goods. They’re on like 5% of exports.
Plus when one side is an unreliable negotiator (the US) there’s not much rational behind continuing.
>Canada is that it’s broadly in a weak negotiating position here.
That's an understatement. Hypothetically if Canada were isolated from the world, it would regress in the quality of life in 10 years. The most capable Canadians have moved out, mostly to the US. The average Canadian has unwarranted sense of nationalistic pride about them (compared to their neighbors).
Isolate US from the world, and assuming that the govt does not meddle too much with local businesses, in 10 years they will bounce back to being more self sufficient than it is now.
This is a useless hypothetical. Almost every country would regress in quality of life if it were suddenly cut off from the global economy. The options aren’t a bad deal from the US or complete isolation. Canada is making deals with reliable partners abroad.
By definition if you isolate a country from the world it would be more self sufficient that very moment than it is the moment before it is isolated. Isn't that obvious?
Agreed self-sufficiency isn't the best term. But if I were to rephrase it, let say that self-sufficiency in terms of the quality of life - US would be in much better shape than Canada. Canada has _significantly_ much more to lose than the US.
> The average Canadian has unwarranted sense of nationalistic pride about them (compared to their neighbors).
If you think Canadians have more nationalistic pride than Americans, you seriously need to get glasses.
Americans literally pledge themselves to their country every day of school.
You understand the word 'average'?
Absolutely.
Literally every American has been force fed nationalistic pride propaganda since their first days at school, continuing for 12 years.
Never mind the average American. They’re all stuffed full of it.
The Atlantic has just posted a piece about this [0] in which it argues many points echoed in comments here. Chief among them:
> The Trump administration has one big idea about Canada: The U.S. is larger, stronger, and richer than Canada, so Canada must sooner or later surrender to Trump’s demands. That one big idea is wrong.
> Yes, Trump can hurt Canada more than Canada can hurt Trump. That part of Trump’s thinking is true. But wars are not decided only by the question Who can inflict more pain? Wars are also decided by the question Who can endure more pain? Trump’s failure to accept this truth is why he lost the Iran war—and why he is losing his trade wars.
[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/08/why-us-canada-trad...
Even with rising economic uncertainty within Canada, the LPC is enjoying ever-growing support amongst the Canadian voting public including amongst conservatives.
Premiers are almost united (excluding Alberta's Danielle Smith) in their support for Carney walking away from trade negotiations.
I get it, but tariffs will only make things more expensive for Canadians, too.
I've got a better idea.
1) Repeal all DMCA-like laws. Make it explicitly legal to break a digital lock to repair a device, run custom code, install third-party parts, or just tinker and hack with your own devices and software.
2) Ban parts-pairing. Prohibit manufacturers (looking at you Apple & John Deere,) from using cryptographic serialization to block independent mechanics and technicians from swapping parts.
3) Legalize "Adversarial Interoperability" (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interopera...)
4) Copyright reform.
That's it. This would make things cheaper and better for Canadians. Lutnick and Trump would seethe eternally, but it would be downright excellent for Canada and a shining beacon unto the world.
I love the concept.
I'd be happy to see the solution to consumer pain And economic productivity to pass permanently pro productivity and pro consumer policies.
Anti monopoly stuff. Maybe a growth policy like land value tax.
I'd need to hear from some experts to know which specific policies would be best though. Ideally you choose some policies that are not perceived as going nuclear, or which leave open counters, or which you would want to remove after a deal is made.
In general, going heavier into consumer/data protection laws and proceeding to prosecute both the Canadian and American monopolies would be amazing though.
> In general, going heavier into consumer/data protection laws and proceeding to prosecute both the Canadian and American monopolies would be amazing though.
IMO you don't want lawfare -- but rather you want to remove bad laws like the DMCA (and related), and the life-plus-70 copyright term, and thus foster more innovation and growth.
It's easiest to repeal anti-consumer/anti-commons laws.
Cory Doctorow wrote a piece about DMCA wrt Canada and US tariffs in January [0], "A winning trade war strategy for Canada", which chimes with your position. I admire his work, and thought that you might like to read it, if you've not already done so.
[0] https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/12/disenshittification-natio...
Yeah, my ideas on this basically come from Doctorow. That guy really has it figured out.
I'd love this too, but it is impossible. If you believe it's possible then you fundamentally misunderstand how greatly coupled our countries are.
A rather large amount of Canadian industry is benefiting from these regulations. Adopting policies like these would be tremendously disruptive and cause a lot of short term issues, upsetting manufacturers, foreign owned subsidiaries (who employ a lot of people), unions and retailers.
I'd love to see copyright reform though.
> A rather large amount of Canadian industry is benefiting from these regulations. Adopting policies like these would be tremendously disruptive and cause a lot of short term issues, upsetting manufacturers, foreign owned subsidiaries (who employ a lot of people), unions and retailers.
Why?
This didn't even exist until 2011: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Modernization_Act
And how would something like banning parts pairing "cause a lot of short-term issues"? Existing supply chains would remain intact. They'd simply be broadened, eventually, by new entrants. If incumbents leave the market in a fit of pique, you can rest assured that the gaps will be filled, and that those incumbents may very well be liable for breach of contract if they refuse to service existing Canadian customers.
Also remove all tariffs on Chinese EVs, and remove the vehicle limit cap.
Sales of US vehicles in Canada would approach zero in just a few years.
The problem is that Canada makes ~1.3M cars/year -- and about 1M of those are for Japanese manufacturers like Toyota and Honda. With unbounded Chinese imports at Chinese prices, a sizable fraction of that domestic industry is going to vanish.
Yet what I'd suggest is to go a step further rather than retreat: Subsidize EV production (including from Chinese firms) on the condition that final assembly or some fraction of production is done in Canada. Keep the jobs, make cleaner cars more efficiently, and make them available to Canadian consumers at reduced (subsidized) prices.
...Then export those subsidized vehicles to Europe and wherever else, where they might benefit from favorable EU-Canada or Brazil-Canada trade policies.
> but tariffs will only make things more expensive for Canadians, too.
Yes, there is no war without pain. But I am willing to face the pain.
However, in the long run, the pain might bring good. It might help products from other countries to enter the Canadian market. I hope to see more food, cars and appliances from Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa in the Canadian market.
Elbows up, at last.
This is on targeted industries, not on 50% of all trade. In particular, the largest industries are
Motor Vehicles, Alcohol, and Dairy per
https://www.newsweek.com/full-list-of-us-trade-tariffs-hitti...
Motor vehicles is funny - tariff the vehicles owned by American companies (GM, Ford, Stellantis). I wonder how the CEOs of those companies react or communicate with the White House their feelings on this.
Great dude thanks for defending the klepto king. Really important work you’re doing.
I’m not defending anything
I’m trying to encourage people to understand the facts in a forum dedicated to intellectual discussion.
Uh huh honey.
Can the US even afford a trade war, they are beginning to find borrowing more money increasingly difficult… currently the debt is around $130k for every man, woman and child in the US.
More difficult is a relative term. More difficult but still easier than other countries so the US remains in a stronger position here. The US can sustain the mess a lot longer than most countries can survive it.
> is a relative term
More "relative" than you think.
Look at the wars the US fought after WWII: Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. The US suffered a lot less pain than any of those countries and was in a lot stronger position. But those countries were willing to face the pain, the US wasn't. That's why the US lost those wars. The same pattern goes now with Iran. You kill people on those countries, those countries hurt the American voters in their pockets.
In trade wars it might be the same mechanism. For the American people, a trade war is mostly to follow the glorious orange leader. For Canadians it is a matter of national sovereignty.
Gross debt to GDP ratio in the US has fallen from 130% in 2021 to under 125% now. It'll likely tick back up closer to 130, but it's been relatively flat.
Economic growth and inflation have kept pace with gross debt for a long time, and if the US continues to stay on top of the tech industry, the raw numbers will likely continue not to matter.
> Gross debt to GDP ratio in the US has fallen from 130% in 2021 to under 125% now.
Most of that was inflation, so it hurts U.S. citizens. I mean, you could reduce it even further pretty easily, but I'm not sure you would want to pay $1,000+ for a Big Mac.
Remember the halcyon days of “earlier this year” when the Supreme Court ruled these tariffs illegal and unconstitutional?
He's using a different rationale, so this would have to be litigated all over again. It's like whack-a-mole.
The average American suffers being hated for this government and I say this currently sitting in a town filled with fly in rich American tourists to keep it alive. IMO the only retaliatory pain point for Americans to start to care will be taxing discounted oil, electricity, fertilizer, and transits of everything to Alaska. But they’ll just blame rather than support Canada. I don’t like Doug Ford or his policies but hopefully he brings up the electricity thing again as leverage because it won’t happen in the other sectors given AB separatism and SK being, well, SK.
SK catching a stray here undermines the unity we are seeking.
Uranium and potash from SK are huge bargaining chips.
AB separatism is meaningless and it's emphasis and influence is propped up by Canada's adversaries.
What unity? They didn't take American liquor off the shelves during the last round of this mayhem unlike every other province, we have no reason to expect solidarity this time.
Canada needs to create an "Economic Reparations Fund" to help those workers and companies harmed by trump's tariffs. Its initial funding should come from selling $10B of US bonds (Canada is ~5th largest holder) and a 5% surcharge on oil exported to the US. US already extracts a 12-22% discount off world oil prices from Canada (who's taking advantage of who?) so 5% shouldn't be an issue. As needed to cover damages, more bonds could be sold and the oil surcharge could be raised.
Canada needs to reduce its exposure to the US market, giving resources to the companies harmed by the tariffs doesn't accomplish that
Meanwhile Israel is sucking USA empty and they call out Canada for being not "fair".
What a sick people.
Someone has to fund Israel's universal healthcare.
I don’t blame them, even if you cut a deal the president sees something on social media and comes back for more tariffs.
Time for War Plan Crimson. https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/war-plan-red-cri...
The Art of the Lose-Lose Deal!
For some perspective about what’s being negotiated:
“What’s at stake in the Canada-U.S. trade deal? How looming tariffs could cost Canada 90,000 jobs”. Trevor Tombe, professor of economics at the University of Calgary
https://thehub.ca/2026/08/20/whats-at-stake-in-the-canada-u-...
Reciprocal tariffs alone don’t make much sense, it’s just making things for Canadians more expensive with an adversary that’s larger and can sustain them longer (although how long remains to be seen with guilt yields rising.)
If they really want to hurt them start making it legal to circumvent DRM on American products and allow build meaningful replacements.
We, in the US, might be able to sustain this longer economically, but Canadians can sustain this longer politically.
Well it's 73 days till the midterm elections so we'll see what happens. Signing a bad deal when the political landscape could dramatically change in a few weeks never made sense.
Yes. Same calculation the Iranians are making. Everyone knows the US election schedule and can read polls.
It's not the U.S. which will suffer but individual companies, which will tend to create political pressure to end the tariffs.
https://www.fastcompany.com/91531349/trumps-canada-trade-war...
If this was even close to true, why did basicly this exact same move work when china did it and when EU threatend to do the same before.
And from a different angle: “giving fines to firms makes no sense since they firm can only get money from customers so it’s just going to make it more expensive for the customer”.
Not an identical situatio, but to say it’s the only consequence, that it becomes more expensive for Canadian, is just not right.
> Reciprocal tariffs alone don’t make much sense,
In the short run, yes. In the long run we can start replacing American imports with other countries' imports.
I want to see more fruits and vegetables from Mexico, Africa and South America in supermarkets. Give me less "Made in America" on shelves.
You’d have to tariff fruits and vegetables like crazy to make the American varieties more expensive than oceanic shipped produce. That seems a fairly steep price for the Canadian consumer.
Which highlights the problems with tariffs, they are self harming. You have to be willing to give up better alternatives for some other reason, and food is a hard one.
> You’d have to tariff fruits and vegetables like crazy to make the American varieties more expensive than oceanic shipped produce.
Bullshit. I already see in the supermarket (Canadian Superstore) oranges from South Africa, lemons from Morocco, broccoli from Mexico, mangoes from Malaysia, fish from the Philippines, coconut from Vietnam, kiwis from Italy, etc.
Yes, oceanic shipping adds to the cost. But most of those countries already have cheaper labor, and that partially offsets the extra cost.
Mangoes and South Asian fish don’t grow close to you no matter what. You don’t think bull shipping Mexican tomatoes via the ocean isn’t going to cost more than the same tomato shipped by the US land route?
If you were going to take that tariff money to build up a local tomato industry it might make sense, Canada already has a growing hot house industry. But don’t kid yourself, tariffs cost the consumer and for low margin highly seasonal and subject to going bad goods like produce is about the worst case scenario.
Whatever man...
If you want people to buy stuff from you Americans then just try to stop pushing forward American imperialism down into everyone's throats. This isn't just about money, it is about my country's sovereignty.
That’s a reasonable reason to apply tariffs. But don’t assume it’s _us_ paying that tax. It’s you.
We get to get taxed on the other side by paying more for Canadian goods.
True North, Strong and Free
I've always said that the only way Trump would "Make America Great" would be to show the world how completely hollowed out by kleptocrats we've become.
These moves increase other countries independence of us, lessening our power and forcing us into a more post America world.
If Trump isn't a double agent then he missed his calling. It feels like every decision they are making is intentionally the "wrong" one.
The most ironic part for me is that he has probably now done more to push renewable energy than any other President.
Huh 30% of our lumber just got 50% more expensive. Good thing we don't have shortages of affordable housing that need new construction to solve. Brilliant stuff Donald. Truly some 4D chess moves.
You still think any of his moves are driven by 'what's good for the US'?
I think it's motivated entirely by schemes to stuff his pockets with money.
He's just running a kleptocracy, and doing so reasonably well.
People still happily buy his tokens though, and then blame China for getting scammed.
Not China’s fault but Biden’s :)
indeed. i'm sure he's surrounded by some lumber moguls stateside that are going to get very rich from this. very russia coded.
i don't doubt deregulation on clearcutting as well as removing land ownership and no logging in national forests & protected lands.... are around the corner with this admin. feel like they attempted that during his last term with attempting to disgrace park rangers over wildfires and saying they didn't rake the leaves on the ground or whatever.
They already started by shrinking national monuments.
https://www.npr.org/2026/07/14/nx-s1-5893397/trump-again-shr...
EDIT: Adding a TL:DR, this article explains how the Trump admin reduced the size of two national monuments by 90% and 91% respectively. This is just one example, there are more and most of them are out west in lands untouched for nearly a century. Saved for posterity because once they're gone, they're gone.
This is extremely partisan language, it shouldn't be on Hacker News
My friend, sometimes the truth is partisan. And in those cases it absolutely belongs on HN.
The issue is that it only goes in one direction of partisanship.
That is hardly the Truth's fault.
I think the clamoring of the aesthetic of impartiality is destroying interesting discussion. The president is currently lining his pockets with tax payer dollars and being an overall bumbling buffoon. It is not partisan when the would view the US as weaker, less intelligent, and less reliable. Its consequences of inaction and bad policy of the current administration
Oh no! Not the implosion of democracy in real time!
You should try programming language X vs language Y, cloud vs on-prem, Framework A vs Framework B, OOP vs Composition etc., etc. HN is as partisan as it gets.
He's already got more money than he can spend. As dementia sets in, he's been shifting more and more to pure emotion-based decision making.
> “motivated entirely … to stuff his pockets”
Someone's pockets, must be gnomes:
• PHASE 1: COLLECT UNDERPANTS. (tariff "foreign" goods desired by Americans, collect upon import from companies, clarify spiked prices experienced by consumers ‘entirely’ due to prior admin policies)
• PHASE 2: … (let simmer)
• PHASE 3: PROFIT. ("return" tariff costs to companies)
April 2: Trump "liberates" Americans from low-cost goods by placing tariffs at 46% on Vietname
May 16: Vietnam approves $1.5B Trump hotel project (https://apnews.com/article/vietnam-trump-golf-estate-investm...)
July 2: US lowers tariffs on Vietnam to 20% (https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/DCPD-202500738/pdf/DCPD-...)
The underpants gnomes. Well played!
don’t forget his weak ego
It's worse than that. He is so completely off that he thinks this means US builders will chose to buy US lumber instead and that will work out positively for everyone in the US.
Simultaneously believes that flooding the market with foreign beef to lower beef prices will benefit American cattlemen.
The "make more money" rationale is way too logical vs how this guy's brain operates. It's better understood as being like Pro Wrestling. Except the "ring" is the world economy.
He wakes up and flips a coin. He doesn’t care anyway and there’s no consequences.
If it was a coin flip, there'd be a 50% chance he did good things every day and we'd have a significantly better outcome than we do now. Its many times worse than a coin clip.
The coin is to decide which terrible person he is going to listen to. And his weirdo followers love him for it.
and votes
Indeed. Donald Trump is only the visible tip of an iceberg. Below the waterline it's a massive and all encompassing corruption, comprised of an organized multi-national cabal that touches every part of the globe and which has its roots in the world starting well before WWI. The goal of which appears has always been to enrich the people on the inside while sewing chaos. To these figures, war and peril have always been more profitable than making peace.
https://annas-archive.gl/md5/2275fbf2d96f518e54c2b72edf163f8...
Price is set at the margin. If America is physically incapable of supplying 100% of its own lumber needs, then that Canadian lumber is the marginal good, and the price of 100% of lumber will go up, not just the Canadian stuff.
Two things that will prevent that:
- inertia
- it's likely that Canadian lumber before the tariffs wasn't the marginal good, wasn't the highest cost supplier. If Canadian suppliers were making 10% more profit than the previously marginal supplier, the price will go up 40% instead of 50%, Canadian suppliers absorbing that 10%.
Or they'll raise prices by that ten percent and become the marginal supplier. No way they're going to accept a loss. (Many items shipped into the USA of late have tariff related fees.)
I know you're being facetious, but his entire immigration policy is to deport a large part of the construction labor pool, so he was never had a chance to make housing more affordable.
Please be aware people reading don't know which country you are from, so using "our" is ambiguous. You could just as well have been Canadian, and it took extra deciphering to guess you're apparently from the US.
Given "Donald" reference is beyond obvious, same if you know anything about trade, geography or housing issues.
Both an American and a Canadian could reference Donald for the same reason: Donald imposed the tariffs.
Canada also participates in trade, is located in the same geographic continent, and is also suffering housing issues.
I too struggled to identify which “our” the comment referred to
Geography as in softwood forests, instead of the iconic maple leaf. In no way Canada would be importing 30%+ of its construction timber from the US. Canada is a major softwood timber exporter.
Do you think Canada doesn’t have housing issues?
This comment seems exactly like the school room exercise where the teacher hands out a test with a paragraph of instructions that includes the text buried in it: "do not answer any questions below" and students rush through the test and fail because they didn't bother reading the entire comment before ripping off their own because "our" is ambiguous. There is plenty of context in the comment, even for non-North Americans, since its very unlikely "Donald" was referring to famed Canadian-actor Donald Sutherland.
Or would you prefer every comment on HN to begin with: "As a/an $CountryDemonym..." or other requisite bona fides?
As a Canadian, I hope this crisatunity translates into rock-bottom prices for lumber at home.
In reality unfortunately it likely means mills will sit idle or shut down entirely. Prices might come down a little bit hopefully
Amen.
Art of the Deal
His negotiating methods, if one can call them that, are like "single use weapons" that are relationship burning rather than building. If you are doing 100s of one-off deals with counterparties you will never talk to again, and who don't know each other.. it might actually work.
But you burn the ability to make more deals with the same counterparty again.
If you played this game with your neighbor over a fenceline or tree limb dangerously overhanging into your yard.. you would save a few bucks once, and have an antagonistic relationship for the next 10-20 years of living next to them. Good luck getting the benefit of the doubt next time.
Meanwhile mister Trump is doing quite well financially, so he is doing something right; and your theory is not covering the whole story.
There is something to be said about this.
Apparently Machiavelli was onto something
Honestly though, it seems like he would rather have everyone lose than take a chance that anyone but him wins.
Even positive reporting of the man makes him out to have a massively fragile ego.
He fundamentally does not understand non zero sum dynamics.
Imagine seeing American wealth increase dramatically over the past several decades, see tax burdens drastically reduced on the top 0.1%, and see almost all of that drastic increase in wealth go to that 1%, and not be able to come up with a solution other than “well, against all evidence I think trade is zero sum”.
And worse, your solution then is tariffs, which are little more than a sales tax which are disproportionately paid by the poorest.
This is a painfully "coastal elite" take, and totally misses why blue collar middle America fell over themselves to get Trump in office.
Trump is doing exactly the things the people who voted for him want him to do, however backwards that is on the whole or however backwards it appears to white collar well paid service industry workers (the richest class of Americans,richer than the 1%, FYI)
e.g. hurting the right people, _even if it hurts us too_
It's easy to be upset when you see the wealthiest class of Americans spend all their money on cheap Chinese versions of what you build. Not even because they cannot afford your products, but simply because they can cost cut by going with China.
This rot is also existential, because as domestic players die, that knowledge is also lost.
Where are all these Americans who will work for Chinese wages?
The better question is where are all these Americans who will buy more expensive American stuff.
The wealthiest Americans aren't buying shit from China, I have no clue where you managed to get that point from but they're buying boutique shit from Europe or elsewhere.
American-made goods have the worst cost:quality ratio for multiple reasons. Capitalism hollowing out quality, businesses capturing markets. They sit in an area which are unaffordable for your average American as a result of the middle class vanishing and not boutique enough for the wealthier ones.
People voted for a wealthy man to loot everything and he's doing exactly that.
Like I said in my earlier post, the richest group of Americans is not the 1%. It's middle/upper middle/upper class suburbia.
This is even more pronounced because these are the people with cash who spend it. Billionaires aren't bingeing Amazon, shien and temu. That 60-90% class of Americans are the backbone of the economy. And they buy tons, tons, and more tons of Made in China.
You're point would make a lot more sense if you didn't say the richest people are not the richest people.
You're right, I'm sorry, it's the 60-95%* that are the richest.
The one percentage have a staggering amount of wealth, but it's mostly in assets.
The "upper/upper middle class" have just as much, but it's much more heavily in cash. Those people and their spending is what keeps the economy moving. ~70% of GDP comes from them.
You should check the actual wealth distribution rather than just reading incessant "The 1%..." headlines.
It's crab bucket mentality. Poor Americans think if they just fuck over enough other people things will magically improve for them. But that's not how it works.
The cost of living skyrocketing is bad for blue collar workers. They suffer the most, actually, because proportionally more of their income is eaten. Salary-paid workers eat the cost much better. The wealthy, even better.
Wages are not increasing fast enough to replace the cost of food and materials. Materials matter because they make up everything. In the interim, hourly-paid employees are suffering.
You cannot increase wages without the money to do so. The factories are broke too. Manufacturing has these fundamental deficits that make it very capital punishing compared to software or finance, or consulting.
Britain is a better example of this because it's much smaller. The country is pretty much London with wealthy desk workers, and then the rest of country with hollowed out industry that is borderline 3rd world.
Naturally the economy wants to kill inefficient businesses, and let the workers fall off the societal wagon. So the question is how do you stop that.
The right says protect industry so they can have jobs, the left says tax rich people so they can have handouts.
This is true, but the problem is accelerated with poor fiscal policy like everything the Trump administration does. Tariffs ultimately hurt manufacturing, not desk workers. The idea was solid: implement tariffs to encourage domestic manufacturing. Except, domestic manufacturing requires materials, which are now tariffed. And the tariffs are so volatile that any capital investment, outside of maybe datacenters and some others, is suicide.
The right says give them jobs, but in reality, their policy destroys jobs. It doesn't help that GOP fiscal policy also implodes the deficit further than it already is, so now you can't even use that money to stimulate businesses. We're stuck in a corner. It will take decades to fix this fiscal mess, and in the meantime a lot of people are going to suffer.
It's too embattled for me to comment on Trumps execution. I'm just speaking to the theory.
Tariffs have been used to protect industry for centuries by every country in the whole current debacle.
Again I'm just speaking about what the wrench does, not how the guy wielding is working.
I'm not sure about the coastal elite view, but Trump was absolutely elected on the platform of I'll hurt the people who hurt you. You're correct about that.
The business-as-usual multi-international neoliberal supply chain model wasn't benefiting a vast number of Americans with no solution other than "don't complain look at these metrics we made up, you're doing great, don't be upset we are making billions while you struggle to afford to fix your teeth or fix your car". Something had to break and break it did.
If you are so non-zero sum, what would you suggest as the fix for those issues if we kept the old model?
Americans are upset about not having any money while being the richest and most powerful country in the world. They are throwing a temper tantrum about a world order they created and are the main beneficiary of.
There's a class of americans that didn't benefit from that world order. However, they elected someone who pretended he was going to help them, and actually is making it even worse for them and better for those who were already benefiting.
The reality is that people judge their quality of life in relevant terms, not absolute ones.
Better to be absolutely poor in a poor country than relatively poor in a rich country and all that
Some people, others are capable of being grateful for what they have.
Before engaging, let's get this settled: do you believe that the US economy operates on a zero sum basis?
No it's not zero sum but it can also not be benefiting a ton of people. Which is what I said..
Here's what I don't get about this: Trump's main campaign promise was to raise prices for American consumers (via tariffs) and to harm the lowest wage earners the most (tariffs as sales taxes are regressive).
Going against "business as usual" resulted in higher prices, as predicted and promised.
Nearly everyone here benefited from lower prices afforded by reduced trade barriers. This isn't some obscure hidden fact.
The mistake here is letting the word benefit do all the heavy lifting. You cannot define benefit in a superficial way and expect things to make sense. Notions like "let them eat cake", or trickle-down-economics, also abuse and distort the notion of benefit. "System X benefitted all Americans in a trivial way" smacks of that kind of false reasoning.
Progressive taxation.
I would suggest not going with the dumbest rock you can find and standing behind it against all evidence.
Trump is and always has been a one-trick-pony: Shock and awe with a ridiculously over-the-top threat to shake his opponent and anchor the discussion high, then "accept" a deal that's better than any that could have been achieved with a calm opponent (pure bullying).
His second weapon is throwing a monkey wrench into the works after agreeing to something. Keep the opponent on their back heel.
It works well, until it doesn't. Once you meet an opponent who stands firm no matter what you threaten, you lose your bargaining position. Carney is well-versed in this kind of negotiation.
Right it probably works in real estate if you aren’t dealing with the same trading partners often. It is a business where dirtbag behavior is the norm.
May also explain why he stopped doing actual NYC RE dev and moved onto his licensing model in dozens of cities (new pools of suckers).
But when every threat & walk back is covered in national media, and he is playing the same game with the same big trading partners .. it loses its effect. Similarly he’s quite old and certainly lost any touch he had.
Iran looks to have figured it out too
You gotta think long term. This is going to cause all those lumber companies to plant more forests and 40 years from now when they’re big enough boom, 3 new jobs servicing the autonomous tree harvesters.
Lumber is not part of these tariffs. These are on a narrow set of products.
Lumber is a different long standing trade dispute going back to the 80s unrelated to the industries targeted by the 50% tariffs.
Trump created a 10% Lumber tariff in Sept 2025, but it was already tariffed before that. Canadian lumber today isn’t suddenly 50% more expensive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93United_States_s...
This does not seem to be accurate, from the reporting I've read. Do you have a source?
This article lists the specific industries. Lumber is not one of them. It lists
Motor Vehicles, Alcohol, and Dairy as the largest industries.
https://www.newsweek.com/full-list-of-us-trade-tariffs-hitti...
The new duties are in addition to existing tariffs on Canadian steel, aluminum and lumber.
According to your own article lumber is included already You’re wrong. It was already 45%!
Yes the average is currently 45%. But that’s been like that since Sept 2025, when Trump increased it 10% with section 232 tariffs. Here’s the executive order
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/full_text/html/202...
The new 50% tariffs don’t suddenly make Canadian lumber more expensive. It was already expensive.
This was all being negotiated together between Canada and US, but it’s not part of the new tariffs.
That quote supports the claim being made by the person who you are calling wrong.
True but it won’t stop price gouging or as the company uses have been calling it price blending.
I read the article, I don't take away from it that Canadian lumber is suddenly 50% more expensive. It explains that tariffs for some Canadian lumber products was set to 50 percent at some point (or maybe lowered again, and raised, it's hard to tell since the Trump administration has issued 50+ different tariff directives in the last year), and that Canada walked away from negotiations recently.
I tried to do some more research before my coffee finishes in 5 minutes, you're right it's not ALL Canadian products or even all Canadian lumber products.
> Canadian negotiators also hoped to achieve some relief on softwood lumber tariffs that go back decades and were augmented with additional tariffs from Mr. Trump.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/21/world/canada/trump-tariff...
These are preexisting trade issues that were being negotiated. The new 50% tariffs are on other industries. Lumber trade issues predate this administration, and aren’t involved in the new 50% that’s put on $20B on other industries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93United_States_s...
It was already at 45% due to previous art of the deal moves.
That orange shit stain has explicitly said he want to drive housing prices up not down
Idk man I just took a trip to Forks, WA and the amount of lumber they had and were processing up there was insane
The gas truck just came to the gas station on the corner and it's just crazy how big those things are, there's such a surplus of gas right now.
Not sure if you're joking, but I remember noticing the same thing last time I spent time there (2017). Lumber yards tend to have a lot of lumber. It's kind of like when you drive by a feed lot and they have an implausible number of cows (the ones over in imperial valley amazed me). Also there's always tankers by my house in Manhattan Beach. These anecdotes are not economic indicators.
Idk about Washington but Oregon has increased logging a large amount over the last few years.
Yes, everyone know a modern economy statistics work by what you can see with your naked eyes out there on the streets.
Is YC News an American website? It seems like all the comments are advising against American interests with regards to tariffs.
Are you not loyal and patriotic if you see your government is bad for the people and you support opposition to it?
US citizen here. Fight back against my government, please, even when the current admin is replaced with another more benign one.
> fight back against my government, please
I don't understand what you mean by this? Fight back against what? Protective tariffs?
Tariffs in and of themselves might make sense, but the process has been arbitrary and illegal. There needs to be some sort of a plan to these things, and there is no apparent plan here.
Trump doesn't have the legal authority nor the mandate to enact arbitrary tariffs. His previous attempt ended with the Supreme Court declaring his tariffs illegal. This was the President of the U.S. willfully breaking the law, and he's doing it again. The law is not meant to be stretched into whatever shape Trump wants.
And Trump has given no thought to his tariffs. There is no analysis underlying it. It's just him acting out like a child and trying to get some kind of "win" that he can sell as a personal triumph.
You cannot negotiate with a country that doesn’t stand by its word.
All other issues aside, Trump and the Republicans love to boast that they aren’t bound by anything including their own promises. This is the end result of that.
You’d be mad to cut a deal with the US right now. The Trump Admin will just try to take another bite. They are dishonest and unreliable. Making America’s word mean nothing is the greatest long term damage done to the country and the surest indicator of the end of the American Century (80 years but we can round up)
It has to do with how America politically structured. The trade nego change every 1-2 terms. China is much more consistent in this, and will scrap all markets from America in the long term. I simply dont see America able to force a Plaza Accord out of this. Japan fizzled because of that. But China wont. And China now backed by Russia, world powerhouse of fossil and minerals. Russia has way more natural reserve than what Venezuela America and Middle East officially published.
If China is backed by Russia then they are properly fucked.
I think a retaliation for a tariff should be an export tax. Let's say Canada puts a 50% export tax on maple syrup unless the car tariff is withheld
It would be the most effective way to hurt Americans.
But it isn’t politically possible for Canada to do this. The two segments that would be most effective, oil & gas and potash happen to come from provinces that already have significant issues with the federal government. One is even flirting with separation, which would be inflamed by export taxes.
Canada is also very venerable to similar actions by the Americans. Refined oil products, fertilizers and oil & gas pipeline transit all come from the Americans.
It is fun to imagine Canada sticking it to the Americans with export taxes, but it will never happen.
The primary issue they have is not being allowed to become vassal states of US empire quickly enough.
"Western alienation" is created and maintained by American propaganda.
I also had this idea, but it can't be something you can get in another place. But for something like potash it might work.
But I think overall it does not really matter. A war is a war, so there will be no real winners.
Here we go again.
Québec makes 80% of the world’s maple syrup. You pretty much can’t get it anywhere else.
Except the USA has its own supply. Vermont would be strongly pro Canadian syrup export tax
Sure, but I am also not sure it's really that essential. People can grumble and either pay or not buy. Potash cannot really be not used in modern agriculture.
What's wrong with Vermont maple syrup?
I don't know, maybe there's not enough of it?
> Canada supplies the overwhelming majority of U.S. maple-syrup imports.
Oh, also add a note on the bottle that this higher price is thanks to your beloved Trump.
Canadians are way too nice to do this, but it would be sensational.
You may underestimate just how petty we can be.
Quebec alone produces more maple syrup than everywhere else in the world combined, by a wide margin.
Sure, but that's no reason not to rely on locally-sourced products where possible, and Vermont makes it possible in this case
No it doesn't make it possible. It can't possibly make up the difference.
Why not?
Maple farms take decades to reach maturity. The US imports about 4x more maple from Canada than Vermont’s entire production capacity. It’s not possible.
So consumers will pay double or substitute with flavoured corn syrup.
Nothing, but they don’t make enough. Unless it claims to be 100% Vermont it’s likely blended with Canadian or entirely Canadian maple syrup.
Scarcity is not really the problem—it is price competitiveness. Many, possibly most, maple syrup producers in New England do not sell to national grocery store chains. You go to the sugar house and buy a jug which is typically much more expensive than what you’d find in a grocery store. But you also have more choices, since you can buy from a person who sells different grades. I rarely see more than one grade for sale in a US grocery store. I don’t mind paying a little extra for something I use in such small quantities to support a neighbor.
> Many, possibly most, maple syrup producers in New England do not sell to national grocery store chains.
But scarcity is the problem. Unless you're able to demonstrate that the low supply is artificial, and that maple syrup producers are a cartel and restrict their own production and distribution chain, as well as block any newcomers from trying to enter large-scale production.
Because as is is, if they manage to sell their entire supply through their sugar shacks, then it obviously means they don't have enough capacity to supply grocery chains, let alone on a national level. That's the literal definition of scarce supply.
Make it car exports as well. A small 5-10% export fee, so that the premium Americans pay for the cars is distributed between both countries
Note that these new tariffs are on goods covered by CUSMA, making that treaty inoperative. Pity it’s one Trump signed…
One must stand up to bullies otherwise they’ll keep at it. Until the US population feels the pain the rest of the world has been dealing with, nothing will change.
Oh, we’re feeling the pain. Anyone trying to actually build things in the USA relies on an increasingly unpredictable and expensive global supply chain.
What he’s been doing is only good for his grift game, not the USA.
If you want to bring manufacturing home, you frame a 5-10 year progressive tariff plan with tax incentives, financing, and grants to help build the infrastructure to progressively fill the demand as the tariffs roll in. Commerce thrives in stable environments with predictable changes, not in chaos and broken promises.
I’m curious just how much pain and abuse Americans need to feel before they do something about it. So far it seems to be record-setting.
Unfortunately, it became so impossible to do business in the USA for many companies (where there isn’t a monopoly and you have to compete globally) that we left.
I moved ops to a Caribbean nation where we can get parts, (it’s simply not possible to source many parts and services within the USA anymore without paying 2-3x in fees or enduring weeks to months of delays in customs) and iterate at a competitive speed.
R&D in the USA went from riding a sport bike to swimming in molasses with crocodiles basically overnight, way too unpredictable to even sign contracts with suppliers, with random tariffs creating 2x cost uncertainty.
You simply cannot plan or make long term contracts when the uncertainty is so high with no predictable pattern. Ironically, we also cannot sign even with US suppliers, because they don’t know if they will have ongoing tariffs to protect buildout or if they will evaporate, so they also cannot risk expanding production.
It’s a total shitshow and the only reason it exists is to power the grift train. If a company is big enough, some shady deal goes down and suddenly they magically qualify under de minimus or some other supposedly dead exemption. I would not be surprised to see that you could correlate these exemptions with purchases of shitcoicins or similar shady wanker-works. The trade shenanigans do nothing to help US businesses, and drive innovation out of the USA like rats off a sinking ship.
What do you mean by "do something about it"? The elections are in November and the new Congress will be seated a few months later.
Our system progresses in two year increments, by design.
It's like Americans are on a train and some of them are being rowdy, rude, aggressive. They find a few passengers to harass. One they lock in a lavatory. Another they throw off the train for not being the right kind of American. Some have opened windows and are actively throwing their feces at whoever they're passing by. And the strongest response mustered by the other passengers is to avoid catching attention, and a meek self-soothing utterance of, "a station is coming up soon and we can vote to kick them off." Except this is the fourth two-year cycle that they've just gotten back on, broken up only by a four-year period underscored by a loud and somewhat violent insistence that their right to throw feces from the train shall not be abridged.
I don't find analogies like this helpful for thinking about this, because they don't illuminate anything about what is being suggested. In your analogy, I could come up with some ideas about what the "passengers" could do prior to reaching the next stop, but that wouldn't tell us anything about what we should do in the real situation.
So I ask again, what would you propose?
What John Lewis tried to suggest to you all. Good trouble. Necessary trouble. If you in good faith need someone else to tell you what other options you have, ho buddy have you guys lost the trail. My original point is that Americans won't do this until they hit a tipping point of discomfort. And for Americans, that tipping point is a very high mark. They will tolerate an enormous amount of fecal frenzy so long as they can just look the other way and plug their nose.
What good trouble would you suggest that would be more effective than seating a new Congress?
I'm a big fan of the civil rights movement, but a lot of this kind of stuff like your comment that I see strikes me as nostalgia that doesn't seem to understand what made that movement effective. It was effective because they thought, concretely, about their goals and about what concrete steps they could take that they thought would make progress toward those goals. That concreteness always seems (to me) to be lost in these contemporary discussions, replaced with "do something" and sloganeering.
Another difference, in my view, is that John Lewis was trying to figure out how to change a system in which there was no hope that the next election, or the one after that, or the one after that, ad infinitum, would itself affect the desired change, because both parties were opposed to the policy he desired. In my view, that's not the current situation. This thread started out being about the Trump administration's tariff policy (which I think is awful and stupid). But the next Congress, which will be seated quite soon - certainly much sooner than any kind of civil disobedience campaign would be able to bear fruit - can write laws that change that policy. And the more people are mad about the current policy, and the more they vote for the opposing party because they are mad about the status quo, the more likely that new Congress is to write those new laws.
There are times when it makes sense to lose faith in normal electoral politics, but in my view, the eve of an election where the incumbent powers are about to get routed is a weird time to suggest it.
A general strike is often proposed.
If even 50% of people just stopped going to work and spending money, things would change veeeery quickly.
A few weeks of inconvenience for decades of a better future? Sign me up.
If you're going to start a war, don't lose. Things in the US are not to the point the people needed would defect to the strike.
It brings up the 1940s struggles of labor, industry, and .gov, and labor lost and had its back broken. Could labor outmaneuver industry and the state today if we ran it back?
> Things in the US are not to the point the people needed would defect to the strike.
Not yet. But it’s coming.
Ok but a general strike is both way less likely to be successfully organized and way less likely to change Trump's tariff policy than just electing 51 Democrats to the Senate in a couple months.
I do appreciate the concrete suggestion rather than the vague "do something", but another attribute of the civil rights movement was that their goals were modest and their "good trouble" targeted at achieving those goals were things they could actually organize. I'm sure John Lewis would have always loved there to be a general strike to achieve his desired policy, but he and his movement understood what they could and couldn't actually organize.
No doubt it’s going to be difficult and require hard work to get rid of him.
But the internet makes organizing a general strike exponentially easier than it was in the past.
If you don’t like the general strike idea, what is your suggestion?
I think you’ll need to revisit this in a few months when he finds a way to make the election ineffective, and/or just keeps doing what he’s doing regardless.
And again in 2029 when he doesn’t leave the White House.
False. I'm in the trenches on the cross-border trade and issue in general every weekday. Investment, industrial production and migration of CAD businesses to the US is rapidly growing. Nothing Canada can do will reverse this, though several storms on the horizon unrelated to Canada could slow it.
King Charles should just leave the American continent.
It's ironic that the US might currently do better with a (constitutional monarchy) king, to serve as an ethical example of living and governance, and change the role of the president to more of a serving bureaucrat
In the UK we've been lucky with our royalty recently, but with a different roll of the genetic dice we'd have Randy Andy as king instead of Charles.
Anyway, you have kings, you just elect them and call the presidents, but they have basically the same political role and powers as George III did in the 1790s cut-and-pasted across. The USA needs to get itself a decent parliamentary system.
> decent parliamentary system.
Isn't that an oxymoron? Parliaments have their democratic shortcomings compared to powerful presidents. And vice-versa. Nations with parliamentary rule are plagued by having heads of state and ministers which weren't in any way, shape, or form elected by the population. A president is at least a democratically elected ruler to represent the people.
I'd argue almost the opposite: America's governing system (and the political culture of rejecting hereditary rule) is a big part of why it became so successful.
There's arguably a straight line from the Commonwealth's greater deference to inherited authority to today's tolerance of weak borders, stagnant growth, and declining economic mobility. A king seems like more of the thing that caused the problem, not the solution.
Have you read John Steinbeck's "The Short Reign of Pippin IV?" [0] All political sides in France frustrated decide to create a constitutional monarchy. The Communists supported the idea because it would give everyone something to revolt against.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Short_Reign_of_Pippin_IV
Bad analogy if you're Canadian
Everything you need to know about Canada is on a population density map.
You can get the same knowledge about every country via a population density map, incidentally!
That population density is highest in more temperate regions with the most arable and productive land?
The craziest thing is, that in spite of the obvious, balatant corruption and supreme incompetence of the US govt, Trump still has around 35% approval rating.
That means the hardcore MAGA base is a third of the US population. I genuinely don't know how to reconcile that with the long term future of the United States.
In Pale Blue Dot, Carl Sagan referenced some survey from the 80s in which one of the findings was that ~20% of Americans agreed to the statement "the sun is alive." In trying to find that survey for this comment I instead found this one from Time in the 2000s [0], in which 26% of Americans (N=2200) responded that the sun revolves around the Earth. America is a big and diverse place, full of people that have little attachment to reality.
0: https://time.com/7809/1-in-4-americans-thinks-sun-orbits-ear...
As a constitutionalist American, I really wish I had an answer for you. The best I have is that two-thirds of the country thinks he's off-base. But I can only agree that's an alarming figure.
It seems like a lot of the governmental structure of this country is predicated on the idea that the People will not elect someone who puts their own interests over those of the nation. And when we do, the whole thing starts to unravel.
That plus the 20% or so that don't care enough to vote.
Maybe the 20% don't want a fucking thing to do with the shitshow.
>The craziest thing is, that in spite of the obvious, balatant corruption and supreme incompetence of the US govt, Trump still has around 35% approval rating.
Not to diminish you statement, but you are right.
Something similar can be said about Canada. In your sentence replace:
US with Canada
Trump with Carney/Trudeau/Others
35% with 95%
and the situation can be summarized as significantly worse in Canada.
Americans love to single out Trump, but he’s just a symptom of an epidemic of civic unfitness that is hollowing out the country. It underscores why the only correct move for the world is de-Americanization. Make them economically and militarily unnecessary and they might even be forced to once again behave correctly, even if out of necessity.
Basket of deplorables
It's the "crazification factor", which is the idea that 27% of the American population will always vote for the stupidest option. So, that 27% is Trump's true floor. He's pretty close to it.
https://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2005/10/lunch-discussions-145-...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efxV1-2rQ2o
Looking past the political posturing i cannot even find any objective information about what the terms were. I just wish they could say what was the state of the deal and why it broke down in some detail.
They wanted to prevent Canada from signing any trade deals with anyone else (i.e. giving US a veto over deals)
People who elected this clown are more dangerous
These tariffs will be struck down as unconstitutional just like the ones Trump attempted under the IEEPA were. Any company who paid in the meanwhile will be compensated while consumers will get the short end, so it will be a nice payday for northern importers.
It's Congress who has the power to tax. If Trump wants tariffs he needs to propose a bill that creates them or gives him clear powers. The legal scholars in his cabinet know this, so why has he not proposed a bill?
Regardless of our different readings of the SCOTUS’s recent opinion, statutes are a poor process for imposing tariffs. The legislative process is intentionally slow and difficult. It’s suited to permanent laws, not diplomacy and negotiations.
Statutes can delegate the president tariff powers and appropriately circumscribe them, and that's what both the IEEPA and Trade Expansion Act did - they gave the executive tariff authority in certain circumstances.
Trump is stretching the definition of those circumstances to the limit, in my opinion, especially because protectionism is the fundamental policy being pursued. If we want general protectionist tariffs than the law should be passed that enables the executive to do so, but that hasn't been forthcoming.
How effective are tariffs as a trade negotiation tool if your counterparty believes its likely the courts will take away the big stick?
There is no reason for tariff policy to be made quickly. Indeed, it would be much more effective if it could change only very slowly, because any positive effects tariffs may have rely on businesses having certainty when making decisions with multi year horizons. Only a fool would make a decision about where to build a new factory based on the Trump era of whim based tariff policy.
I though politics was to be kept out of Hacker News?
Trump grievance is allowed and the comments are extremely low quality.
Amazing that in 2026 Canada, Iran, and US Circuit Courts have the same stance: the US federal government cannot be trusted to tell the truth about anything. Fish really rots from the head.
"However, last-minute changes in the U.S. proposed terms were unfair, uneconomic, and called into question the reliability of any deal."
It seems like if the other side agrees to a deal too easily then Trump doesn't think the deal is good enough. He only likes deals where the other side is getting screwed and has to be coerced into signing.
> It seems like if the other side agrees to a deal too easily then Trump doesn't think the deal is good enough.
That's a great observation. So basically everybody should be saying no to him all the time to limit the damage because as long as there's one yes the stupidity will only grow.
I'm so glad there wasn't a single yes, when Greenland popped up.
Carney had to take a stand, the last few moves he pulled angered a lot of people. For example he started talking about asking the provinces to put US booze back on the shelves which for us who boycotted prior to the govt saying it was a good idea, is giving up our leverage before any demands were acquiesced. He's playing the same song with the digital media tax and even with the case that made Meta forego all Canadian news outlets.
Basically he was elected to stand up to Trump and as an economist, come up with a strategy. He initially appeared to do that, but given that it largely hasn't swayed Trump, he is now backing off most of it. You could argue it's a strategy worth trying since to buck-for-buck hasn't worked, but you could also make the point that the electorate, without being told what the plan is (duh), feels he is weakening our position.
A lot of the strategy has been to wait it out and expect uproar from the US people which... largely hasn't come.. yet?
If a bear is rampaging around your campsite do you think you have to "take a stand"?
This isn't some sort of status game. Well, maybe it is for Trump, but not for anyone who's not an idiot. Unfortunately, Carney is an idiot, and is in it for himself and his friends, not Canada.
The way to deal with the bear to the south is to first get rid of all the stupid stuff that is bad for Canadians regardless of Trump, like provincial liquor monopolies and dairy supply management. Don't ask for anything in return - Trump's word is no good anyway - but it may help with public opinion in the US. It will also help with better trade relations with other countries. After getting these other countries to open up as much as they're inclined, unilaterally eliminate tariffs on all countries (including the US). It's what's best for Canadians, apart from a few who profit off the lack of competition from other countries.
For bonus points, get rid of sales taxes, so there is zero friction importing things to Canada. That's great for consumers, and also great for any business that wants to continue or establish itself in Canada.
I don't understand your point about public opinion in the US. Public opinion here is already strongly against Trump and his foolish tariff policy. Most people here do not want to see Canada acquiesce to "the bear". It only prolongs the madness.
Public opinion is not a binary. It could certainly move further against Trump, and just as significantly, it could move in the direction of free trade, whose opponents include plenty of people other than Trump.
What's madness is continuing policies that antagonize other countries, and which are bad for Canada, just to make yourself feel better about having "elbows up".
That is not why the Carney administration made this choice. You are more focused on the immediate term situation, whereas they are more focused on the future steady state. They are taking an immediate term hit, with the belief that it will lead to a better steady state later.
The future is unknowable, so that might be the wrong bet. But in my view, it is the right one, in no small part because the political situation is on their (that is, the Carney administration's) side. Political support is what determines the ability to withstand pain. In Canada there is currently far more solidarity with the administration's stance on standing up to US bullying than there is in the US for the Trump administration's (many) price-increasing policies.
If the political situation were reversed, this would probably be a bad idea for Canada! But it isn't, so it isn't.
Trump tries to betray Canadians here. When you make negotiations and then at the last second try to worsen the terms, you are not acting in good faith. This is a consistent theme with Trump: he wants to take advantage of you. This is a de-facto mafia system. The "art of the deal" is the mafia way. You can see this with Iran too - Trump negotiates, then attacks. Then fake-negotiates, attacks again (and loses anyway). The guy is a problem for the whole world.
He would run a child's lemonade stand into the ground.
Trump attacked iran in the middle of negotiations. It's probably a pattern from the salesmen book he didn't even write.
That should read, Trump betrays Americans. The reality is that he is destroying American credibility on the international stage, which is going to have long term effects on their ability to make agreements with other countries in the future. Standing alone is not in the interest of any nation.
As for betraying Canadians, Trump is not responsible for representing Canadian interests. I wouldn't want him to either. (Speaking as a Canadian.)
In 2025 there was a $46 billion trade deficit with Canada.
The U.S. was already buying considerably more Canadian goods than Canada bought from it.
I've had a trade deficit with supermarkets my whole life. Not once has any one of them bought anything from me, yet I keep buying and buying...
How does that justify Canada openly lying?
Openly lying about one's position is a typical negotiating strategy available to parties and used by both parties in the Canada-USA trade negotiations. It doesn't need to be justified. My issue is the American threats of violent annexation. That is more indicative of a shakedown.
What is the lie?
How do you expect to have a trade balance with a country that is 10% of your population.
How do you expect to have a trade deficit with a country that is 10% of your population?
This reads like a non sequitur to me. What is your point?
Canada's (Carney's) framing is basically propaganda by omission.
How so? Is the thing you accuse them of omitting this thing and the trade deficit? How is that relevant?
Negotiating with the Trump administration is completely pointless, and can even result in your own government buildings being bombed while negotiations are still going on.
The only argument bullies understand is being punched in the face.
I wish more countries wiuld have the courage of cutting off ties with the US.
Good luck Canada. The economy is already pretty bad and they can't win a tariff war against their largest trading partner.
American can't win a shooting war in Afghanistan. It's not actually a strong country.
Just at the right time when China is looking to expand its exports. People said that Trump was Putin's stooge, but he might have been Xi's.
I'm concerned that governments worldwide are finding tarrifs to be a popular (and exciting!) way to exorbitantly increase the size of governments and goverment coffers which are then used for populist aims. We need to re-educate people that tarrifs are bad.
You think the tarrifs proceeds are going in the government coffers?
Trump is officially billions richer since he became president for a second term.
Officially.
People here in Canada have not been sitting still. It is a truely fantastic oportunity, it's almost like 10% of the US market was suddenly transported to another country for free, and all we have to do is fill it.
Prepare the distilleries ...
It is a good thing canadians are so nice. Dropping US alcohol is a tiny thing compared to some of the weapons canada might deploy. Look at all the back-and-forth deals in recent years and you will see an exemption for oil and potash. Think gas prices are high now? See what happens if canada starts shipping less crude. Think food prices are high? See what happens when there is no fertilizer because canada has restricted potash exports. And what will make Musk's head explode: canada is starting to allow cheap chinese EVs into north america. Canadians will be driving them around the US very soon.
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/dispatches/how-to-secure-the...
> US mines produce roughly 500,000 metric tons of potash per year, only about 8 percent of the 5.9 million metric tons of apparent annual US consumption. The remaining demand is met through imports, producing a net import reliance of about 92 percent. Reflecting the high concentration of global potash production, most of that supply comes from Canada (79 percent), with smaller volumes from Russia (12 percent) and other producers (9 percent) including Israel.
The sentiment here is that nobody wants U.S. citizens to be negatively impacted by trade restrictions or tariffs. We are figuratively and, in many cases, literally friends and family. (Aside, even if our provincial governments allow southern booze back on shelves, it'll stay there.)
It would be decidedly un-Canadian to leverage electricity, potash, or other commodities necessary for survival in trade negotiations -- despite what Ford may suggest. We're nice, but we won't bow to bullies. Elbows up, eh!
> nobody wants U.S. citizens to be negatively impacted by trade restrictions or tariffs.
As much as it pains me to say it as an American, little will change unless US citizens are negatively impacted. Trump is losing power and support in the US precisely because people are becoming more aware that he's hurting them.
I see the same thing in Russia. It seems like there is no such thing as a civilian target because getting your opponents citizens to uprise and while yours to support you is the key strategy now.
It’s Vietnam Hearts and Minds all over again.
Except i think the American heart and minds campaign in Vietnam was lip service to a campaign that was measured by body count, and dead non combatants can’t litigate their combat status, so McNamara was befuddled the USA was “winning” and losing every square inch where there were not American soldiers in force. That there was no equivalent to insurgent Viet Cong embedded in North Vietnam says everything.
I want them to be negatively impacted. Maybe a couple family members spoke publicly about what’s happening, and the rest remain silent or indifferent. My cousins are too busy with their multi million dollar AI roles to even see us non-millionaires as human.
You do realise it's the citizens that voted trump in?
And you don't have to ban them, just make them more expensive. Your US brethren did vote for tarriffs. With that comes higher prices.
It's a slow moving train wreck. I hope the consequences of these petulant actions scar the minds of voters for years to come. We're seeing the yield on treasuries creeping up, I think that's one of the consequences.
And what will make Musk's head explode: canada is starting to allow cheap chinese EVs into north america
Another Musk moment: most aluminum in the US comes from Canada. Most of Musk's vehicles are built with aluminum. These tariffs will directly increase Tesla manufacturing cost in the US, making them even less competitive.
trumps the best thing that could have happened to the rest of the world
There's a good opportunity to use that tariff money and subsidize critical exports to everywhere but USA. Europe gets cheaper minerals and Trump gets left begging China for scraps at insane prices.
If you want political gestures then impose heavy sanctions on Israel and declare that Latinos can get refugee status in Canada because of ICE. That would be an economic win too.
But the Canadian government wants to be the 51st state. They have rapidly defunded social services, expanded fossil fuels and will adopt US style militarization. In fact, purchasing those munitions from the only country that has threatened to take it over.
Sweden? Germany? Last two defense contracts negotiations…
Seems like the only thing more expensive and damaging these days than being an enemy of the US is being an ally!
Wonder how long it’ll be before Trump throws his toys out the pram again. Wouldn’t be surprised if he moans his allies have abandoned him.
Canada is the kind of ally that sends a chinese spy to NATO headquarters.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwymk20n0v7o
This is so cute, won't bother the US in the slightest, and will be backed down from instantly. It could literally be within days.
Tariffs are the only good thing that Trump has tried to do - really driven by Bessant, the only competent person in the administration.
He's had to react to "Trump's" bizarre decisionmaking, which is really the sum of Israel's and random lobbyist's desires, which has completely thrown off his vision, but "free trade" is bullshit, only benefits big business and the market, only in the short term, and everyone always knew this. It is absolute exploitation of poverty and authoritarian regimes around the world, and ends up in US margins, not in US working people's pockets. Bessant doesn't give a shit about working people, but he gives a shit about shifting the failing US from short-termism into long-termism - and you can't do that when your population is borrowing to buy imports and not working. You are forced into using your military for conquest in order to protect your own supply chains, and your military has been corroded by the same corruption as the rest of your economy, you pay 10x as much for everything, so there was never any need for them to increase production capacity.
The anti-tariff libs are like "it's really taxes!" No shit, Sherlock. Remember when Grover Norquist wasn't the spirit of progressivism? Remember those protest movements that you hollowly ape the language of while openly opposing the policies of - the anti-globalization, anti-free trade movements? Remember how every single thing they predicted came true?
Tariffs are a tax on foreign exploitation and supply chain insecurity. We need to bring that exploitation back onshore. Cheap bullshit is of no benefit if you don't have a job.
Don't be fooled by elites in upper-middle class jobs furiously trying to ban anything that would lower their own incomes for a second - those are the same people who were telling you to learn how to code when your parents got laid off. They're the YIMBY gentrifiers of your neighborhoods. They've got hundreds of thousands or millions of $ in the market and in housing, and it's doubled and tripled while you moved back in with your parents, who can't afford their medication. When housing prices drop, they get mad. Housing prices are dropping right now, and they're getting mad.
Completely unproductive financialized ways of making money are disappearing. They've bet the farm to the tune of trillions on hundreds of giant factories dedicated to word association. If you're a desperate poor person who has made meme-y financial decisions, please sell your bitcoins and your pokemon cards. I'm not even sure if precious metals can save you. You need production to move back onshore. You probably need immigrants gone, because you might have to learn how to pick fruit if you want to be able to eat it - it's the most productive thing the US does.
Also, don't be fooled that there's some sort of economic consensus about how unwise tariffs are because you're online. Most of the people participating in that conversation are foreign elites who sell their own populations to the US for an extraordinarily luxurious living, send their kids here to go to school (and write articles about how that's somehow good for you) drive up your rents, and call you a racist for objecting - when they were literally propelled here on a cushion built by and on the slave classes of their home states. Tariffs are meant to transfer their (the few) success to you (the many) - so you can buy.
They're compradors, and they're propagandizing you for their own benefit.
After the US completely falls, and we're at 90% poverty, 9% comprador, and 1% plutocrat, they'll bring back manufacturing and sell your poverty to the flourishing Chinese middle class - a country that doesn't let the wealthy and foreign interests control its policy.
People here in Canada have not been sitting still. It is a truely fantastic oportunity, it's almost like 10% of the US market was suddenly transported to another country for free, and all we have to do is fill it.
Canada and EU tightening their relation, pretty sure there are a lot agreements in the making. Will be great for both and appreciated by the people living in EU (and surely Canada as well).
The EU is definitely dragging its feet believing that Trump will go away and "normality" will return.
The EU can't understand anything except normality, we see it on all kinds of issues.
A lot of it has been half-hearted. Basically "wait out this loser and everything will go back to the way it was". A lot of Americans are leaning on this as well.
Like over the last year we (Canada) should have utterly obliterated the US from any element of the Canadian supply chain. Instead everyone just keeps expecting things to return to normal so no one makes the necessary investments to stop it at the border.
Americans voted for Trump, a child-rapist stunningly stupid criminal, twice. It should never return to the way it was.
> Trump, a child-rapist
In 2016, an anonymous woman filed a federal lawsuit alleging that he raped her in 1994 when she was 13 years old. The lawsuit was voluntarily withdrawn that same year, before the allegations were adjudicated. No court found that he committed the alleged assault.
I guess just ignore some certain files not fully being released, his name being purged for them and all that drama. But hey, let's keep this discussion on topic, this guy is the commerce secretary and was directly involved in tanking the trade talks:
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/06/howard-lutnick-comm...
I wonder if he tanked those discussions on purpose, his sons now at his former company, profited wildly from the last round of tariffs:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/meet-quiet-winners-supreme-co...
Sounds like the right move. I can only hope that the rest of us lap dogs see the (common) sense.
The USA is increasingly the source of economic and military destabliisation in the world and it's getting real hard to justify being the best little doggy for them. I'm not suggesting any action more drastic than calling a shit deal shit, and frankly it's pathetic and embarrassing that this is such a rare occurence.
And yeah, maybe some miracle corrective action will begin with a new president but the thing is, that will necessarily include restoring our "special relationship". You're better off refusing a bad deal outright, rather than trying to reneg later.
now imagine the next level of his destructive crime-spree August 2027
because this is nothing compared to when he starts to feel his loss of power
btw there are reports he's going to use ICE to do actions NEXT to voting centers to get around "no armed agents in voting centers" to force the voting to shutdown
electrocution gloves and all
we're in the US authoritarian era, Supreme Court and Congress let it happen and now there's no undo button
If the democrats don't manage to control both houses on the midterms and IMMEDIATELLY start the impeachment procedure against trump, I will start selling my portfolio and buying gold as fast as I can.
If Trump and his cabal is left unchecked we will be running fast towards something that will make 1929 like child's play.
And no, I am not a liberal. Far from it.
At some point , looking at all the damage, it becomes hard to dismiss Trump as merely unintelligent and incapable. The other possibility is that the destruction deliberate, and the goal to end US hegemony. Would things proceed any differently if it were?
He's an agent of chaos. His decision-making process is rashly emotional and based on narcissistic needs.
Much of the self-destruction flowed from the pages of Project 2025. You can't just blame Trump: you have to include the Heritage Foundation and the entire Republican party.
This is not a problem that goes away when Trump ultimately leaves office.
Not to mention an electorate that voted for it after the entire plan was spelled out for them.
I'm willing to give his base some benefit of the doubt, given how heavily propagandized they are via Fox News, OAN, Newsmax, Sinclair Broadcast Group, etc.
On the campaign trail, Trump disavowed any connection to Project 2025 when it was leaked, and I suspect most of his base took him at his word. To anyone not trapped inside the right-wing media bubble, that is somewhere between naive and insane, of course, but people inside the bubble don't live in the same reality as the rest of us.
However, your response does remind me of an important point: two other rather large, looming threats which need addressing are media consolidation and money in politics.
You're right, but his base are also a bunch of lemmings who will believe what they are told to believe.
Absolutely, Trump is a symptom of the problem. The root of the problem is the moral rot of the Republican Party.
Why are you so hostile to populist policies in America?
In general any deal with the other party is introducing last minute changes is one to walk away from.
And specifically any deal made with the U.S under Trump has no credibility, just ask Iran.
I think Trump is severely misreading his position in the world. It's not April 2025 anymore. There will be consequences for everyone, but I am not sure his own party will support him through this in an election year. Especially now as the last time he publicly stated he backed down because if rising bond yields, which is actually happening already before any trade war. Is he really going to start another one, already in deep trouble because of the mess he made in Iran.
I think he will cave pretty quickly and Canada knows it.
I think they'll support him through the election. If the election goes as bad as it seems likely to, that might upset the apple cart. But it's also possible that it won't, and the Republican party will just be an empty discredited husk when Trump leaves the stage a couple years later.
Canadian here.
The leaks surrounding the deal that was on the table earlier this week did not look promising. e.g. Locking in 15% tariff's on autos made in Canada would have resulted in slow death for the Canadian auto sector, not to mention hamstringing all of NA at a time when their only way to compete with Chinese auto makers is crushing tariffs or outright import bans. Something probably had to move here to get the deal done. Unbelievably, things went in the opposite direction.
Howard Lutnick strolled into the Whitehouse at the eleventh hour and told Trump he thought that they could get an even better deal with Canada than what was on the table[1]. Americans should probably remember this guy. His family runs Cantor Fitzgerald, who has been buying up rights to tariff refunds[2]. Companies hit by tariffs can gamble on them eventually being declared illegal, or they can sell the rights to their refunds for a smaller amount and have some degree of certainty. When tariffs are struck down in court, companies like Cantor Fitzgerald make serious bank. So, here Lutnick is again, whispering in Trump's ear, drumming up more business for his family.
Trump tends to listen to the last person who talked to him, whether it's an economist (This is unlikely, as Trump prefers not to talk to academics) or a bell hop. In this case, Lutnick got in last, Trump decided to move the goal-posts, the talks failed as a result, and now there are more tariffs that will probably be struck down by courts.
Meanwhile, in Canada, people actually seem to be happy that this deal failed. Carney has made multiple concessions over the last year and change while the U.S. has made none and just kept demanding more and more. The general sentiment was that it's time to get tough, even if that means tariffs. Reports are that the latest demands during these talks were for limits on Canada's ability to strike trade deals with other countries, exclusive U.S. access to Canadian critical minerals, and even meddling in Canada's French language laws. Any one of these things would have been seen as a deal-breaker during normal times. With the mood being what it was, they were unthinkable. The American contingent knew this, so we can only conclude they deliberately scuttled the deal.
Interestingly enough, Carney seems to have taken a page out of Trump's book by delaying retaliation until Sept. 8th, giving the Americans a deadline for a change. That leaves room for a couple of TACO Tuesdays. However, the messaging from the PM and premiers has been careful to point out that they are ready to hunker down and wait for Trump to leave office. Carney has solid support for this stance while Trump does not, even among republicans, plus the midterms are looming. Trump increasingly looks like the one without the cards.
---------
[1]https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-us-tariff-trade-talk...
[2]https://fortune.com/2026/03/07/winners-supreme-court-tariff-...
YES! YES!
Elbows up, finally!
This is will be painful. But it is what we need.
It is more than time for Canada to learn the lesson that Navajos, Comanches, Apache and Cherokees learned too late: Americans lie, cheat, betray and steal. We shouldn't be cozy with them.
Question for Americans: do you guys understand what's happening?
The thing to keep in mind is that the current trade agreement was negotiated and signed by Trump himself. He has spent the last 18 months seeing what a terrible deal it is. He does not want a "deal" into conventional sense, that is an agreement that works for both parties. He needs the counterparty to be humiliated and subjugated. CUSMA (the current agreement he promoted and signed) is bad because it works for all parties, it does not subjugate and humiliate the counterparties.
What happened in these particular trade negotiations? Is that the actual negotiators had something worked out earlier in the week, then at the last minute the US made some new demand that was meant to humiliate Canada, and this tanked the negotiations. What exactly did they ask for? It's irrelevant, the point was humiliation.
Actual trade policy, whether you want access to Canadian dairy market, or lumber tarrif rates or whatever, none of that matters.
Is this a common understanding down south?
Edit: after I wrote the above, it came out that the thing they demanded last minute is restricting Canada's ability to trade with other countries. Obviously, no PM would agree to such a thing, it's purpose isn't to have a deal, but as I said, subjugation and humiliation. https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/livestory/us-canada-trade-war-...
As an American, there is a lot of disinformation in the U.S. A lot of people absorb MAGA talking points. The rest of us are in a continuous state of stunned disbelief.
Trump tore down a third of the White House without permission, and somehow it doesn't set off alarm bells. He's supposed to be a steward of the government for 4 years, not a king.
Under Trump, the us governments signature might as well be in pencil. This is America’s high water mark. It has lost the trust of the world. And since OpenAI and Anthropic and NVIDIA are the bulk of the hope of the American economy… America is fucked.
Canada walking away from American Bullying will go down in history of the moment the empire’s descent accelerated.
Fuck all the halfwit racists who voted for trump.
Is it Canadian dollar for US dollar? /s
Importantly Canada has committed to matching every American tariff dollar for dollar, which the US already considers unfathomable. Greer repeatedly cites that only Canada and China retaliated, which is such a weird criticism. Is he intending to compliment us?
So expect Trump to start spiralling. Also expect lots of astroturfing about how desperate Canada is and that it has no choice (one of those hilarious slop purveyors appeared below).
Canada should begin the process of withdrawing from USMCA, and the truth is that NAFTA cum USMCA has worsened Canada's lot over the past four decades compared to peers. Trade agreements with the US are worthless, and even negotiating with that Epstein pedo cabal of grifters is useless. It sounds like the Canadian team were foolishly going to give in to many things (any concession of any form always comes back to hurt you), but at the last minute Howard "Epstein Island" Nutlick swooped in and tried to extract even more, undoing it all. Which...thank you Nutlick, you disgusting greaseball. You did us a great favour.
CUsMA might be convenient re Mexico. They can consider withdrawal once a bilateral deal is reached.
Please have a look at the actual flow of trade between CAD and USA, and its components. The impact is nothing like what you suggest for the US. Canada can bend the knee to Trump, or it must gut its policies on natural resources and become an extractive economy similar to Russia pre-Ukraine war. There's no other option for Canadians and time is not on their side.
The direct impact of the Canadian economy on the US one is small, but thankfully for Canada the broader economic reality is that the US isn't picking a fight just with Canada. America is creating a lot of messes for itself around the world. The effects of any Canadian retaliation will not be felt in isolation.
Carney internally is playing to a domestic crowd that is actually more hardline on US trade policy than he has projected.
The issue with "bending the knee" so to speak is that the hardship is just as bad as the no deal situation, except with the worse outcome that Canada's future prospects for diversification are diminished.
There is hardship down both paths for Canada, but only one of those paths has a long-term future.
You're right that it likely involves a heavier investment in our own resource extraction, but that seems to be precisely what Carney is moving towards.
As for the amusing side-quip about Russia, chances are Canadians will likely look to emulate some other resource-extractive based economies, like the nordics. The issue is less the extraction and more how the wealth from that extraction gets hoarded. And there too, it would manifest as the need to move away from the American/Russian model of a small set of simple-minded, deranged oligarchs siphoning all the wealth in the economy towards themselves.
Ya know, there's not a damned thing I can do about any of this, other than TRY to get citizenship elsewhere and leave this shithole.
And fascism is taking hold lots of other places as well. Canada's a laugh, with Alberta seperatism. And they also had trump trucker caravans.
EU? They're boiling in their own juices with the fact they now need air conditioning due to climate devastation... And many countries make it illegal without health reasons.
Japan and SK are both doing very poorly. China has some of the harshest immigration.
South America is still being fucked with by the CIA and destabilization idiocy.
I understand the tune-out check-out hippie response. There's fuck-all I can do, other than watch.
Id like to suggest that you rethink your opinion on the trucker caravan protest.
It is a reasonable position to frame them as opposing authoritarian government policies and for the governments response to be overreach.
The popularity of the trucker protest made and makes sense. Big anti government movements like that attract all sorts of bad actors and the media and government worked to highlight the worst aspects of that protest.
Mentally reducing the trucker protest to "thus Canada is bad" makes you seem like the type of black and white American fool that has created the political environment in the USA.
> It is a reasonable position to frame them as opposing authoritarian government policies and for the governments response to be overreach.
Well that's a big coded pile of bullshit.
What polices are "overreach"? By what standards? What authoritarian rules are being protested?
Oh that's right. It's all anti-vaxxer and 'cure yourself of Covid with bleach and ivermectin' bullshittery.
I have absolutely no fucking sympathy for a bunch of covidiots. Doubly so, since these chuckle fucks were ALSO pro-Trumpers.
> black and white American fool that has created the political environment in the USA.
And it's hilarious that you wouldn't touch the Alberta seperatism/fascist movement happening right now. You all like to pretend your shit doesn't stink... And well, I smelled it during wildfire season. Turn my sky yellow orange.
But all of this is spoken like a Republican riling shit up on Facebook.
Calm down. This aggressive response to having your ideas challenged is exactly the type of thinking you resent in your political opponents.
> Trucker protest is _all_ pro trump anti vaxxer / ivermectin
This is black and white "us vs them" thinking. This is fundamentally false and your inability to parse truth out of your political opponents positions will make your positions meet more resistance, ultimately you personally less influential and less useful to your team. Perhaps even net negative.
> Wouldn't touch the Alberta separatism
I am from Alberta. Alberta separatism is far less relevant or popular than the media makes it out to be. Im not sure how to make sense of the difference between CBC's reporting and my lived experience on the ground in Alberta, but everyone around me here is pro Canada and against separating. Even the rural conservatives. I have literally never met someone who actually wants to separate from Canada.
Take this style of discourse back to reddit please and thank you.
Oh look. Tone police.
>TRY to get citizenship elsewhere and leave this shithole.
Most of the wisest ones who had the means have already left. My heartfelt sympathies with the one who are still stuck there.
>And many countries make it [aircon] illegal without health reasons.
Name one country that has done this.
https://consumerchoicecenter.org/keeping-it-cool-removing-hu...
How about 29 countries?
"AC penetration stands only at 19% (vs. 90% US, 91% Japan). This is not a cultural inevitability but a regulatory outcome"
And specifically Geneva Switzerland, it requires medical need to install air conditioning. https://www.gazetaexpress.com/en/Why-are-air-conditioners-al...
"Our existing free trade deals already provide Canada with preferential access to 1.5 billion consumers, and we are on track to double that market access by the end of this year."
the amount of mental gymnastics needed to believe this is off the charts.
Total TDS meltdown in Silicon Valley members.
It's like they can't help insult Trump and >50% of US voters any time they get a chance.
No intellectual honesty for the fact that there's a large trade deficit with Canada, and facts are facts.
Meanwhile Trump is pushing to rekindle his love affair with Kim Jong Un.
Don’t forget, it’s the longest land border in the world, largely remote. Feels like it would be easy to work around with minimal effort.
Sure, it would be pretty easy to smuggle small, high-value items, but most of the trade volume is in large items like lumber, steel/aluminum, new vehicles, and potash, and it's pretty hard to sneak a dozen 18-wheelers across the border a day. Electricity and oil are also pretty common exports, but those are even harder to smuggle since they go across in fixed wires/pipelines.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/04/trump-tari...
I have not been following the Canada thing but generally have been learning more about trade and Trump's approach seems less chaotic and random than is talked about.
US's largest trading partner is Mexico. The biggest thing we import from them is automobiles & auto-parts and the second largest is computers and electronics.
We all understand the benefits of trade is meant to bring in - such as goods manufactured by countries whose prowess making those goods better to the benefit of all.
So it's interesting to look at this example. Automobiles - does Mexico have a prowess in that segment? A tell tale sign of "no" is that Mexico has no domestic auto brand. In other words 100% of auto exports from Mexico is actually US automaker production that shifted to Mexico is persuit of cheaper labor, weaker unions, and less environmental and other regulations that gets in the way of manufacturing.
I am focusing on this example because it's the largest segment of our trade with our largest partner - literally the biggest thing the US imports is our own shifted auto production.
The second largest segment is also interesting. Mexico isn't known for its computer and electronics brands either. What's going on? Turns out that Asian manufacturers (eg Lenovo) do the very final assembly in Mexico but all the components come from Asia. It's not actually "efficient" to do this except that when assembly happens in Mexico those components magically become a "north American good" by NAFTA terms and can go all over US and Canada with no duties or tarrifs or restrictions.
So the second largest segment with our largest trading partner is Asian manufacturers exploiting a NAFTA loophole.
As an American who inherently is pro trade (I am an MBA...) this is revealing about the obvious disadvantages of how trade has been configured. The auto example is literally NAFTA being used to bypass American labor laws and environmental regulations while maintaining access to our market by American companies themselves. The electronics example is Asian companies bypassing the long standing trade conditions by whitewashing Asian products as north American goods.
It is obvious that trade pre-Trump was not set up in a smart way from American perspective. The auto is a great example: the government simultaneously made it very hard and expensive to manufacture at home, and very easy to shift to Mexico.
I don't know the details with Canada as much but I no longer assume things were working great and US is meddling lens by default.
Canada doesn't have domestic auto companies, yet we manufacture auto parts and assemble automobiles destined for the US. From my understanding, this was negotiated as part of the trade deals. There is no good reason for them to desire cheap Canadian labour, weak Canadian unions, or weak Canadian environmental regulations. For one thing, Canada is known for none of those things. On the other hand, Canada had a lot of things the US wanted: access to the Canadian market and access to Canadian resources. I wouldn't be surprised if something similar happened when trade deals were manufactured with Mexico. While Mexico isn't on the same economic tier as the US, it isn't a third world nation that people like to paint it as.
As for companies looking for loopholes, it may be fun to blame it on Asian manufacturers. I would suggest that Americans take a good long look in the mirror. US companies were outsourcing assembly to Mexico long before Mexico came under the NAFTA umbrella. Quite often, at least with electronics, those US companies were using parts manufactured in Asia. Should Asian companies hold themselves back, should they avoid using the same practices as their American counterparts, just because it isn't fair to Americans? If anything, they have less reason to because Asian countries are responsible to their own citizens, not to Americans.
Your comment sounds like you are arguing with me but you are actually agreeing.
I am not "Blaming Mexico" - I am pointing out that the policy as I described it made no sense from American perspective. You are right that the American manufacturs did assembly in Mexico (form Asian components) before as well but it's the same point - an essential Asian good masquerading and benefiting from being a "north American one"
I think it is a bit more complex than that, since how Asian those goods were varied a lot across time.
Early on, it may have included semiconductors designed in the US, with manufacturing outsourced to Asia. That outsourcing may have been to a facility owned by an American company or to a foreign owned company. Then the semiconductors may have been shipped to Mexico where another company was manufacturing consumer products. Under such circumstances, can such a product be described as essentially Asian?
Of course, things changed. Asian companies took more control over product development and manufacturing. When they ran into labour and regulation making manufacturing in their own country more expensive, perhaps due to tariffs or perhaps due to their own citizens demanding better, they used the same playbook.
You're right in that it made no sense from an American perspective, but that isn't because it suddenly became cheaper to manufacture in the US. It did not make sense because they lost control of the playbook, because others could do it better.
On the whole, I agree with your point about trade being used to bypass labour laws and environmental regulations. I'll be more blunt with how I phrase it: the practice is exploitative and causes more harm than good. That said, the current American response appears to be driven by the demand for trade on their terms exclusively. Never mind that other countries may want something in exchange for their resources.
> I have not been following the Canada thing but generally have been learning more about trade and Trump's approach seems less chaotic and random than is talked about.
Trump imposed tariffs on an island populated only by penguins.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly8xlj0485o
But this was the neoliberal globalist agenda for the past thirty years. Lower trade barriers, export manufacturing to low wage workers with poorer conditions. The result is lower automobile costs for American consumers at the expense of blue collar jobs evaporating.
There's a gap there. The reason automaking is expensive in the US is labor and environmental laws whose intent is to keep Americans employed at high wage and to keep the planet green.
So on one hand it's government regulation that makes us not compative. On the other hand the government doesn't ensure this happens by making it easy to bypass via mexico. So the end result is the environmental protections don't kick in and Americans don't make the high (or any) wages.
So we either drop those laws and open up trade, or we keep those laws and make it harder to bypass. Those are the two non-dumb options.
Canada should grow their population to 100-150 millions. this way it will have decent internal market and be more attractive to make trade deal with the rest of the world. Instead it relies on the US which appears to be very bad idea.
That's my view. The "Century Initiative" is being criticized for suggesting that Canada should reach 100 million by 2100. But you'd never believe it, the criticism is that this is too many people, and not many people criticise this "Iniative" as having an unambitious goal.
The criticism of the Century Initiative is that the extra 60-80 million are going to come largely from countries like India at rates that destablize Canada while further entrenching the kind of inequality that we've seen grow over the past 15 years.
The British did this to almost 20 different colonies, with the same people groups for the same reasons.
Is that what it said in the Century Initiative? That it would come "largely from countries like India"? Show me where it says that I'm open to it.
Century Initiative obviously doesn't specify from which countries, it merely mentions skilled immigration as its primary source of growth.
However if you take a step back and wish to argue in good faith, and look at where people did come from when Trudeau decided to open the flood gates 10 years ago, you'll find that India represents roughly 40% of immigrants. I'd say that can be described as "largely", and there is no reason to believe that opening the gates even wider would change those proportions.
Time for Canada to cozy up closer to China, that'll end well for them I'm sure.
Yep, we’re getting low cost EVs, solar panels and a bunch more. We’re stoked.