Claude built the site, it's obvious from the style.
Which is to say that anybody with a $200 subscription and access to Namecheap and Netlify could have built the site in one hour flat. There's no longer any need for an NGO, media nonprofit, or lobbying group to build such things; the effort required has been reduced to near-zero, so anybody can do it.
Yeah, I figured that it was LLM-build - which I'm generally okay with if there's someone willing to put their name to it so I can make my own determination about trust level.
> There's no longer any need for an NGO, media nonprofit, or lobbying group to build such things; the effort required has been reduced to near-zero
Right but actually creating the thing is only half the story. You need to fact check it (especially with LLMs) promote it, approach journalists to bring it to their attention, etc etc etc.
In many ways making a web site has always been the easy part.
> You need to fact check it (especially with LLMs)
That's true... but with every day that passes it's increasingly less true. Today's best high-end LLMs are highly optimized towards fact checking themselves and each other. The winning move is to get a report from Claude and have both Kimi K3 and GPT-5.6-Pro adverserially review it. Then synthesize a fixed version with any one of them. Then adverserially review it again in incognito mode.
This sounds like a lot of work, but it takes literally two minutes of effort and it works amazingly well.
>promote it, approach journalists to bring it to their attention, etc etc etc.
Well it's not very hard these days with social media. All you need to do is post on HN with a compelling enough headline and people will upvote it even if it's AI slop.
And it doesn't look that great. The CSS is all fucked up for me the more you scroll down. No padding in most of the sections. Also, "modelled", lol. I guess that's Claude's British English at work again.
> Why does it matter? The data sources are cited and are publicly available.
Because I don't want to click through to every data source to verify every figure and need some baseline level of trust about whether they've been correctly used.
If there's an error, I want to be able to contact the author somehow.
Last time I checked, Canada was the largest trading partner of 27 states, directly and indirectly. Disclaimer; I’ve lived in both countries and am a dual citizen so not unbiased.
I'm trying to think of the number of people I (an American) know who considered trade with Canada to be a real issue.
The answer I keep coming back to is I know zero people who considered that.
Does the US have a trade imbalance that causes problems, particularly in our manufacturing sector? Yes. Can tariffs kind of help with that? Also yes. Really, you need to instill some sort of sense of duty to country in business leaders, which is a far heavier lift, but this at least puts a number to it.
Does picking a tariff fight with Canada, our closest cultural ally, solve the above problem to the point where it justifies the costs? Hell no.
I'd say that the cultural links are so strong that any actual accounting for trade imbalance is just not worth thinking about.
Some things are bigger than money.
... which, come to think of it, is something that the current administration doesn't understand, at least from a "personal net worth" standpoint, and explains why this is happening to begin with.
That's one thing that I find so confusing about this. Even if we assume that the administration genuinely doesn't care and does want to annex/culturally subjugate Canada, it's really not easy to separate the two cultures and escalating this to a certain degree is going to prompt domestic backlash.
I was born in America. About half of my ancestors lived in Canada on both sides of my family, I know my Canadian cousins, I spent time in Canada growing up/was taught Canadian history as well as American history, I have a Canadian education and half of my professional network is Canadian, etc. I'm eligible for dual citizenship and am pursuing it now, as are other members of my family, whereas we never bothered before because the separation never seemed to matter. With the recent change in Canadian citizenship laws, I'd estimate at least 25% of the Great Lakes population is eligible for dual citizenship at this point.
One of my parents and some of my siblings are Ojibwe/Anishinaabe. My paternal cousins are all French Catholic. (My dad's parents were Protestant but my aunt married into an old French Catholic family and converted.)
I don't even really know how I would separate out the two nations' influence, and that's true of a lot of people, especially those of us whose families have lived here since before America and Canada existed.
Yes! US agriculture (Mostly a red state industry) needs potash. Google AI says that most potash comes from (in order) Canada ("is the primary global exporter and supplies nearly 80% of U.S. imports"), Russia, Belarus, China, and "smaller volumes are supplied by countries [...]".
If I were king of Canada, I would restrict supplies of such materials needed by red states.
at this point one can't really assume it was about picking a tariff fight with Canada any more than the Gaza peace plan was about bringing peace to Gaza. guy is just a shit-thrower. that's his one move, throw some shit and see what he can get out of it. walk into a restaurant and claim that he's been treated so badly they're going to have to sign the whole thing over to him, and settle for 10 free meals and a pack of steaks from the walk-in.
> Really, you need to instill some sort of sense of duty to country in business leaders, which is a far heavier lift, but this at least puts a number to it.
The bigger problem is, when consumers have the choice between cheap crap from Aliexpress et al and (vastly) more expensive made-in-<own country>, usually only the affluent who want to show off will be able to choose the latter.
And that is a socially explosive thing in the long term... the masses, especially the rural ones, really do not like it if they feel that they can only afford subpar crap while the "rich urban librul elite" gets access to the good stuff.
That is the stuff that in the best case fuels populist movements, in the worst case revolutions.
(And on top of that, often enough "made-in-<own country>" is bordering the legally required limit on domestic production or is outright just slapping a label and repackaging the Thing)
America's trade imbalance with Canada is basically crude oil. Which they get at a significant discount because it's much more expensive to export anywhere else.
America then refines it and exports it as finished product or uses it internally -- one of the reasons why America has relatively cheap gasoline prices.
This "trade imbalance" is a massive benefit to America.
I've seen this point in a few different places and I don't know that it's understood as widely as it should be.
So just to expand on why that's the case. As a net producer of energy right now, the US produces more than it consumes. This is why it get's pointed out, that as a net producer, the trade deficit with Canada is also a surplus (or reduction in deficit) on the other side with other countries. Yes it may not be the same physical barrel that is exported vs consumed, but in a fungible way they're commodities. If you separate out that portion, we (Canada) then buy more goods from the US then we sell. And that's also just the goods trade, not including services which the US also sells more of to Canada than the other way around.
Another poster pointed out that Trump is complaining about the trade deficit at the same time he's trying to increase that trade deficit by building the Keystone XL pipeline....
Every side benefits from a trade. That's why the trade is made. The US is able to afford a trader imbalance because the USD is the world's reserve currency. Other countries are subsidizing our trade imbalance. It's a huge win for the US.
Tariffs will not bring back manufacturing. They increase prices of inputs, reduce incentive for competitiveness and invite retaliation. Look how well tariffs have worked for Brazil and Argentina or for the US under Smoot Hawley.
> The US is able to afford a trader imbalance because the USD is the world's reserve currency. Other countries are subsidizing our trade imbalance. It's a huge win for the US.
The geopolitical calculations regarding China and the socioeconomic conditions of working class people in the Midwestern and Northeastern United States would beg to differ.
You need to have at least some control of your own manufacturing destiny for national security reasons, and you need somewhere for people with a high school diploma to work or they start dying deaths of despair.
Also FWIW - the US is the second largest manufacturer in the world, only behind China due to it's larger population. Our productivity per worker blows China away (though they are catching up) and is the best in the world. We manufacture plenty and do it well.
This idea that we have lost manufacturing and we need some push to onshore it all again is... well... another manufactured problem that isn't.
Or any rate it's mischaracterizing and confusing (A) "we miss having lots of good paying manufacturing jobs" with (B) "America needs to manufacture and export more widgets."
It doesn't matter what the trade policy is: Those amounts/types of jobs are gone and won't come back with demand--not unless something else happens too, like outlawing robots and making unions mandatory.
I agree on the security aspect. However, tariffs aren't gonna fix that but will make it worse. We need to remove red take and lean into projects like Port Alpha and California Forever. We also need to work with our allies who are already strong on manufacturing instead of alienating them at every step possible.
The job situation is unfortunate but these jobs will not come. China has lost more jobs to automation than the US has to China. If we want people to prosper we need to build housing where the economy is and encourage people to move there.
While we have lost tons of factory jobs, we have created lots of service jobs that require similar skills. There has been a boom around jobs like solar installation, HVAC and similar. They just aren't as visible because it's a little bit everywhere, rather than a company or industry town.
That'd be the dumbest thing the US has ever done. The next 50 years would be as Vietnam, with people indistinguishable from Americans, sneaking across the border 8000km long, to explode, and kill, and destroy. A Vietnam that never ends, and is local.
Not to mention, Canada can make nukes if it wants to. It just doesn't. It gave them up, but still has the plans.
Canada is already mostly through, setting up trade agreements with the entire rest of the world. It's amazing what can be accomplished, when it's clear that everybody wants to bypass a certain country.
The whole world is going to trade with each other, and just ignore the United States. It'll be a rough five to ten years of transition, but there's been lots of economic situations like that. The US is the past, it's relevance waning.
The US is also far more vulnerable. It's 90% of the way to a civil war already.
It became an issue when Canada did not bow down to Trump's 51st state demand. With Trump's vindictive nature and narcissistic disorder, you get this situation. It is actually completely unsurprising if you think about it.
As an American, I don't see see how you can separate this trade talk from the constant, explicit threats to Canadian sovereignty by Trump - threats he's carried out in reality against Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba. And now economically against Canada.
It isn't just "which Americans consider trade with Canada to be a real issue," it is "which Americans think Canada should become a territory of the United States."
It's just plainly absurd. It is inexplicable to me that Congress doesn't act. And infuriating to me that my representatives in Congress don't do more (even though they are in the opposition.)
I don't believe that annexing Canada is really a MAGA issue, even though they may claim to support it. I think it's just an inexplicable Trumpian obsession like Greenland.
> Really, you need to instill some sort of sense of duty to country in business leaders
Goods are imported because business is a competition and consumers prefer cheap imported goods. Its not like american executives flatly want to offshore, if a competitor does and they dont their customers will leave. The only solution business leaders can have here is collusion, which is illegal. If we want goods to be manufactured domestically it is on us as consumers to buy domestic products over cheap imported ones.
This seems illogical. You can't simultaneously claim that the US is paying higher prices for Canadian goods because of US-imposed tariffs and then turn around and say only that Americans are paying a tax on buying Canadian goods on Canadian-imposed tariffs. Both countries are either paying higher prices or paying higher taxes. Canada's tariffs must also be viewed as America is taxing Canada back, or else neither can be viewed that way.
Separately you can go back prior to 2024, for example, and discuss monopolization of Canadian companies and import duties on American products which also must be treated in the same fashion for this analysis - Canadian imposed tariffs on dairy (I don't care about dairy other than it being an obvious example) would have to be claimed to be an American tax on Canadians for this to be consistent.
Whatever claim you would levy here, equally applies to Canada minus the dollar volumes depending on which country imports more and what products are imported since Canada is also implementing additional (because they've had tariffs for a while) tariffs on specific goods/services.
I think you are reading way too much into that "you" in that sentence. I read it simply as a list and total of all the retaliatory tariffs that Canada is imposing, and the site emphasizes that this is obviously bad for American jobs, not that American consumers pay the tariffs that Canada is imposing.
This whole trade war with Canada has to be one of the dumbest fucking things I have ever witnessed, and that's saying a lot given the complete incompetence and buffoonery of the current US administration. First they had to imitate Idiocracy with the the WFC fight on the White House lawn, now they're imitating South Park by killing relations with Canada. Heck, a big joke in the original South Park movie was that it was so inconceivable that of all countries Canada is the one we'd have a war with, but Trump just wants to speed run to every country on the planet hating our guts.
> I think you are reading way too much into that "you" in that sentence.
Sure that's fair, but on the other hand that's what was written and the framing I think is unfair and inconsistent. Of course, others may go along happily reading it and thinking wow we created these tariffs to raise prices and Canada decided to tax us!? That's worth clearing up and being honest about, in my view.
Imagine someone writes another article and frames it as though Americans are taxing Canadians with tariffs. Surely folks would want to "clear that up" wouldn't they?
I think it's a bit more complicated than you're implying here.
Yes - you are technically correct that each country is taxing its own citizens/businesses with tariffs. I also agree that phrasing is more honest than what the article states
But for interconnected supply chains, the result can get pretty muddled.
Ex -
Canada sells wood to a US company. US applies tariff.
That US company sells a component made of that wood back to a Canadian company. Canada applies tariff.
That Canadian company uses that component to produce a good that's sold to US consumers. US applies tariff.
etc...
For the end purchasers of the finished product - the net increase in price (the final "tax" you pay) might be a summation of various tariffs applied by both countries as they interact with each other.
The price increases at the final sale are additive, regardless of which country is capturing the tariff as tax. The real result is that the product is just more expensive to make when tariffs are in place, and so must be sold at a higher price based on the total tax applied to all parts of the product (regardless of where in the chain it was US/Canada/China/Other/Etc actually capturing a tariff).
Ex - you will pay more because of US tariffs, and more again because of Canadian tariffs in response to US tariffs.
I don’t disagree with you at all. My point was this:
> Ex - you will pay more because of US tariffs, and more again because of Canadian tariffs in response to US tariffs.
Also applies to Canada for the exact same reasons you highlighted. So when they say that Canada is taxing Americans because of tariffs, it goes both ways.
> This whole trade war with Canada has to be one of the dumbest fucking things I have ever witnessed, and that's saying a lot given the complete incompetence and buffoonery of the current US administration.
You'd think that, strategically, a decapitation strike is the worst thing that could happen for a nation. However, that would be incorrect: the worst thing that could happen is this, a vain and incompetent buffoon installed in the top leadership position. With no leader you're just not making decisions, but the organization can continue operating under autonomous cells. With a hyperactive incompetent leader you're speedrunning every conceivable bad decision and everyone just has to look on in horror.
As incomplete as the sentences from one of these may be, their "weave" style tickles the attention mechanisms for their most ardent supporters, and comes across as heartfelt, relatable, and ultimately a coherent stream of consciousness dump.
I don't recall Justin Trudeau making leadership decisions so diabolical and incompetent that Serious People were forced to ask if he was a foreign agent.
I am not sure that there is one example which can meet all your criteria, though there are many examples of stupid things that (almost) everyone agrees he should not have done:
Summary quote from IMDB: "The U.S. President, low in the opinion polls, gets talked into raising his popularity by trying to start a cold war against Canada."
I think the idea is that tariffs cut both ways. They increase prices for foreign goods as well as reduce demand for imports causing job losses in the exporting country. The original tariffs increase prices and the retaliatory tariffs reduce demand for American products causing job loss.
Yes but since Canada is also initiating new tariffs (they've had existing ones for specific products and industries already) so anything said here applies to Canada as well.
For example Canadian tariffs increase prices and their retaliatory tariffs also reduce demand for Canadian products leading to job losses.
They are willing to bear some pain in order to hit back at the US administration. And they're pretty united - Doug Ford for instance is not on the same team as Mark Carney - but has been very vocal about striking back.
It's really a singular achievement to piss off such a good neighbor so badly.
And don't forget the Greenland threats, those for us Europeans, and in European foreign affairs are a line of non return.
Other administrations will not be able to repair the damage, because what was exposed really is that the US system allows for each administration to destroy and 180 whatever the previous one did.
They can be repaired - but if you think they can't be, then the US should act accordingly which would mean yea go ahead and take over Greenland, withdraw forces from Europe, &c. because as you say they can't be fixed so we might as well do whatever we think we want or need to do - that's the chain of reasoning that this theory of unrepairable relations sends us down.
But we've had challenges and issues before. The US has tried to obtain Greenland in the past. There are plenty of examples of such things throughout history ranging from the Suez Crises, to French withdrawal from NATO, to, well, 2 World Wars caused by Europe, and more and all was forgiven, if not forgotten.
We sometimes think that things in the moment are perhaps more important than they are. The news wants us to believe the world is ending to get clicks. Europe still lets Russian tourists in and houses Russian billionaires and their families despite this existential threat from Russia, as an example.
The news isn't threatening allies, offending/mocking them, charging tariffs, subverting the very institutions that have been built together. A human in charge is.
In any case, they cannot be repaired without a change in the US political system to a representative and stable (in foreign policy) democracy.
As long as the system allows for complete 180 degree turns every 4 years making any arrangement bears little value.
Business and friendship is built on long term horizons of stability. If that's not possible, we can only adapt.
> The news isn't threatening allies, offending/mocking them, charging tariffs, subverting the very institutions that have been built together. A human in charge is.
No but they're getting you to click on every article where Trump is SLAMMED and Marcon is TOASTED and Canada RETALIATES or whatever.
> As long as the system allows for complete 180 degree turns every 4 years making any arrangement bears little value.
That's not true and nobody has ever really treated it as such. The entire history of the United States has pretty much operated by making changes every 4 years. I'm not sure the US has really executed 180 degree turns, but even so sometimes it's necessary to make abrupt changes because acting too slowly could be very dangerous. For whatever it's worth I'd hate to see Donald Trump elected to, idk, some 20-year term as president in the name of not making changes every 4 years.
Aside from that, this cuts both ways. You can't throw everything away after decades of helpful, and peaceful cooperation just because of 8 out of 12 years being annoying. There is no stability in that - it's just "agree with me or I go away" which isn't good for long-term relationships.
> In any case, they cannot be repaired without a change in the US political system to a representative and stable (in foreign policy) democracy.
To be clear we operate a representative and stable democracy in the United States. Other countries may not like our actions, but suggesting that US action == destabilization implies that any action that any entity takes is also destabilizing. Things don't happen in a vacuum.
> To be clear we operate a representative and stable democracy in the United States.
We most certainly do not, the system is just nicely setup to make us believe that this is the case. In 2020 for instance, we were given an amazing choice to choose between a senile grandpa and the most vile and corrupt human being ever to walk the earth. all us elections boil down to this, the establishment decides who their 'best one' is at any given time and you get to choose A vs. B. there isn't a single other country on the planet where this is the case that calls itself a democracy. it is one step removed from china and russia, we just get one more choice than they do :)
Well, in that case I’d say our version of Democracy is just the better one and European democracies are just one step away from Russia/China and are very unstable and unrepresented in comparison to the US because of the EU.
We have only 720 members of the EU parliament representing over 600 million people. In the US we have more people representing fewer people, ergo we are more representative.
How is the president of the EU chosen? Is it a direct election across all citizens of the EU?
Don’t mistake gigantic bureaucracies for representative democracy.
> To be clear we operate a representative and stable democracy in the United States.
It's not a representative democracy.
A representative democracy is one where all voters are represented in a branch of government.
The US system is exactly the opposite. It's a winner-takes-all democracy. At all levels. And worse, the executive represents only the half that voted him, the other half don't exist.
There's many other flaws in presidential and semi presidential republics but they are beyond the topic of representative democracies.
And no, the US is clearly not stable on foreign politics.
> You can't throw everything away after decades of helpful, and peaceful cooperation just because of 8 out of 12 years being annoying.
It's a decision that's been made in Washington to revert decades of successful cooperation. We're merely reacting to the new reality.
> That's not true and nobody has ever really treated it as such.
That's a very US-centric way of looking at this. American exceptionalism is cultural, it's not tied to a specific administration.
> I'm not sure the US has really executed 180 degree turns, but even so sometimes it's necessary to make abrupt changes because acting too slowly could be very dangerous.
You don't build international and economic relations with abrupt changes.
Business and diplomatic relations require predictability, stability, trust.
Also, be careful thinking that "acting slowly" is the worst that can happen in a mature democracy.
Giving individuals the capability of acting fast and with little limits might be the most dangerous one. Each presidential republic is merely waiting for the right Erdogan, Trump or Putin to break it.
I'd rather keep our slow and inefficient European democracies where prime ministers have to win the trust of the parliament and their own party every single day with all the bad that comes with it, if the alternatives are what I see around the world.
> It's not a representative democracy. It's a winner-takes-all one. In US the executive is one single individual representing only those who voted him. Sometimes it's even a minority vote like in Trump #1.
The US is literally a representative democracy as a matter of fact and definition. Winner-take-all in contested elections does not make the US not a representative democracy.
> And no, the US is clearly not stable on foreign politics
No country is then.
> It's a decision that's been made in Washington to revert decades of successful cooperation. We're merely reacting to the reality.
Ok then we should just do whatever we want and who cares about alliances or whatever. Withdraw troops, normalize trade relations with Russia, take over Greenland, whatever. All the decades of successful cooperation are nearby reverted and so we can now take different actions with that in mind.
> That's not how you build stable relations, trust and business.
In that case any time a country or bloc takers abruptly actions they now no longer are building stable relations, trust, and business. For example if the EU takes an abrupt action we can make this same claim.
> Also, I really don't agree with your view of the "acting slowly".
What is my view that you disagree with?
> We don't need big changes, but small compounding ones.
Maybe. Sometimes you need big changes. Like climate change. We need to make big changes (at least in my view) to address it because small changes won’t save us in time.
> They can be repaired - but if you think they can't be, then the US should act accordingly which would mean yea go ahead and take over Greenland, withdraw forces from Europe, &c. because as you say they can't be fixed so we might as well do whatever we think we want or need to do
That is a very black and white view of the world. There is actually a very large area between acting as a close ally and acting as an imperialistic adversary.
GP is saying that the close ally bit is out the door. I think we can become close allies again if the situation requires it, but definitely won't if it does not. The USA has proven to be highly volatile, highly unreliable, and highly unreasonable.
> 2 World Wars caused by Europe, and more and all was forgiven, if not forgotten.
With all due respect, but claiming USA victimhood in the World Wars at the hands of "Europe" is a pretty fucked up and incorrect way of framing this bit of history. Pearl Harbor wasn't exactly the doing of the Belgians.
> That is a very black and white view of the world.
> The USA has proven to be highly volatile, highly unreliable, and highly unreasonable.
Right, black and white haha. Well if we are highly volatile, highly unreliable, and highly unreasonable why would we do anything besides whatever we decide to do? Can’t trust us, can’t reason with us, and can’t rely on us. In that case, who gives a shit about alliances with Europe?
> With all due respect, but claiming USA victimhood in the World Wars at the hands of "Europe" is a pretty fucked up and incorrect way of framing this bit of history. Pearl Harbor wasn't exactly the doing of the Belgians.
European wars started by Europeans. The Japanese may well have bombed Pearl Harbor anyway (don’t forget, the US alongside anglosphere allies liberated Western Europe at the same time Japan was being fought) but that war takes on a whole different character if simultaneously all the European powers weren’t initiating another round of their petulant and childish wars.
> don’t forget, the US alongside anglosphere allies liberated Western Europe at the same time Japan was being fought
Let's not forget the Soviet Union, who did most of the actual heavy lifting of liberating Western Europe. If D-Day had never happened, the Soviets would have rolled right through Germany and then occupied France and the low countries. The Nazis would still have lost, but all of continental Europe would have been behind the iron curtain for the Cold War.
The anglosphere allies didn't defeat Germany so much as stop the Soviets from occupying Western Europe.
> "If the United States had not helped us, we would not have won the war. One-on-one against Hitler's Germany, we would not have withstood its onslaught and would have lost the war. No one talks about this officially, and Stalin never, I think, left any written traces of his opinion, but I can say that he expressed this view l several times in conversations with me."
> - Nikita Khrushchev, political commissar overseeing Red Army generals during the Battle of Stalingrad and later the leader of the Soviet Union, as written in his memoirs.
> "People say that the allies didn't help us. But it cannot be denied that the Americans sent us materiel without which we could not have formed our reserves or continued the war. The Americans provided vital explosives and gunpowder. And how much steel! Could we really have set up the production of our tanks without American steel? And now they are saying that we had plenty of everything on our own."
> - Georgy Zhukov, Marshal of the Soviet Union and the Conqueror of Berlin (AKA the guy who got Hitler to blow his final thoughts out all over a wall), as overheard by a KGB monitoring device in 1963.
In addition, the UK and loose European merchant fleets repeatedly ran the gauntlet of German Navy, ice, and bad seas to deliver that material - so much so that
I wrote that the Anglosphere liberated Western Europe, I didn’t write that the USA beat Germany nor did I write that the Anglosphere beat Germany. I chose those words carefully precisely because to say “they beat Germany” while true in some ways would be misleading and would discredit the Soviet’s contributions.
With that being said, the Soviets allied with Germany to help kick this whole thing off, so while yea maybe they get credit for not losing to Germany they also reaped what they sowed.
> Right, black and white haha. Well if we are highly volatile, highly unreliable, and highly unreasonable why would we do anything besides whatever we decide to do? Can’t trust us, can’t reason with us, and can’t rely on us. In that case, who gives a shit about alliances with Europe?
So, what's the plan? The USA imperialistically conquers land of former allies and rules the world forever with force? All countries are forced to trade with the USA? Or will the USA just operate as an island? How is this gonna work?
I don't think you realize how bad things have already gotten. We're not at the level of Europeans or Canadians burning American flags and chanting "death to America" in the street yet, but we are definitely speedrunning towards that. According to polling a large majority of the countries in the world now see the USA as the biggest threat to world peace [0]. A lot of people have also come to simply really, really hate (most) Americans. The complacency and impotence in stopping the utter madness and stupidity (or worse, doubling down on it) are damning. I wish it were different.
If people feel that way then there’s no reason to do anything besides whatever we want. We are untrustworthy, unreliable, highly volatile (anything else we should add?) and every Canadian/European is proudly chanting death to America. At that point, who cares?
It reminds me of those abusive relationships where some girl (EU/Canada) hates the boyfriend (America) but keeps coming back to him despite all these flaws. You’re untrustworthy! You’re bad! And then you just keep hanging around because deep down you know you need us. That’s why you have to keep saying the same thing over and over again - you need us and want us to act in a way that best suits your interests.
> At this point I'm just going to assume you're trolling. Well done, I guess.
Every accusation is a confession.
> "Sure, I am an abusive asshole. But you need me, so I'm going to continue to be an abusive asshole. Why wouldn't I? You need me."
Well, then why are, idk what to call some folks, I guess anti-American pro-EU? still trying to convince us of anything?
It's like you keep repeating "we don't trust you", "we don't like this or that", "the relationship will never be the same"! Ok got it, we've moved on and we're flying solo now, why haven't you moved on?
That doesn't make sense. Are you accusing me of trolling? Based on what?
> Well, then why are, idk what to call some folks, I guess anti-American pro-EU? still trying to convince us of anything?
The option "the USA stops being an abusive asshole" is really not on your radar, is it?
Because that would be the obvious and best way out of the current situation, like in the abusive relationship analogy you so aptly described. You do realize in that scenario the boyfriend is unequivocally the bad guy, right?
> Ok got it, we've moved on and we're flying solo now
The USA hasn't "moved on" and is not "flying solo". It is being petty, reneging on previously made agreements and actively significantly hurting and threatening to hurt the other parties in their (ex-)relationships constantly. It's like a couple with kids where one of the parents suddenly starts behaving like the biggest piece of shit on earth. Even after the divorce that is going to be a massive shit show for all parties involved.
If the USA wouldn't be dragging the rest of the world down with it, we wouldn't care. But you are. Spectacularly and moronically badly.
> That doesn't make sense. Are you accusing me of trolling? Based on what?
I'm not accusing you of anything, but if you are going to accuse me of trolling then I'll assume you are admitting to trolling instead.
> The option "the USA stops being an abusive asshole" is really not on your radar, is it?
It's not - that's why my analogy made sense. We're abusive, relationships unrepairable, never to be trusted again, highly volatile, you name it. You implicitly or explicitly (and others) have made these claims, not me. I think we can absolutely still work together, and there is a lot of room to repair things and frankly they're not as bad as the internet people make them out to be.
But if all you are going to do is sit there and repeat these feel-good phrases: "can't trust, can't redeem, highly volatile, &c" then ok sure yea we're all those things and there's no interest in talking or trying to repair anything because you've already declared it's over.
The USA hasn't "moved on" and is not "flying solo". It is being petty, reneging on previously made agreements and actively significantly hurting and threatening to hurt the other parties in their (ex-)relationships constantly. It's like a couple with kids where one of the parents suddenly starts behaving like the biggest piece of shit on earth. Even after the divorce that is going to be a massive shit show for all parties involved.
If the USA wouldn't be dragging the rest of the world down with it, we wouldn't care. But you are. Spectacularly and moronically badly.
How have we not moved on? I don't understand. You and online Europeans have said we're all these really bad things, no hope in repairing the damage, &c. so we have to be moved on now that we're no longer together. Maybe Europe hasn't gotten over it? I'm not sure. The US has though - we're flying solo and moving on when it comes to trade.
If someone said all of those things to you, allegedly wanted nothing to do with you, can't trust you, you're horrible, you're a destabilizing force - what exactly would you think the relationship is like? It's impossible to suggest that we haven't moved on unless you're suggesting Europe hasn't moved on and that these allegations of irreparability are just sensationalized bullshit (they are).
It is being petty, reneging on previously made agreements and actively significantly hurting and threatening to hurt the other parties in their (ex-)relationships constantly.
Has your ex "moved on" if they regularly threaten to steal your shit, harass you, vandalize your neighborhood and your car?
Don't feign innocence. You're not fooling anybody. It is so very obviously not "just lil guy USA chillin' in the corner minding their business and not bothering anybody".
Idk, my ex (the EU) keeps coming around asking me for stuff, bothering me, then getting mad when I decide what kind of trade policy I want to have as is my right to decide.
But either way, the relationship is irreparable, it's all over, all that stuff so the EU and the online EU folks should just accept the new status quo and stop complaining.
I think this comparison has run its course anyway. At the end of the day these relationships are repairable and will be repaired and changed if we all decide to, and no amount of sensationalized doomsaying from people on the Internet will affect that. Trump will be gone, we'll elect some Democrat, they'll do some things, France might elect Marine LePenn, the'll do something, and on and on it goes.
We're talking about different things. The French withdrawal from NATO unified command is a good example of what it means to say relationships can't just be repaired; it took 43 years to bring them back!
It's true that the news can overstate just how much things have changed. The US and Canada remain major trade partners and strong allies, with NORAD currently in the middle of a week-long joint exercise, and it's unlikely that's going to change. But you should not expect a return to friendly trade relations in 2029.
Again, we're talking about different things. What the OP understands "repair the damage" to mean, which I know because I've seen the expectation myself in the wild, is that the next administration can restore the 2024 status quo by just going on a really compelling apology tour. I don't think that's likely; we're still going to see Canadians boycotting random consumer goods, Europeans demanding that everyone should move off American tech ASAP, and countries in general being a lot less willing to negotiate for trade agreements the Americans can't credibly promise to keep.
Their lack of specificity does not invalidate my comment.
> and countries in general being a lot less willing to negotiate for trade agreements the Americans can't credibly promise to keep.
We have a lot of trade deals and have created new ones while Trump has been in office. Countries have willingly negotiated with us and us with them. What you are writing is ideological wishful thinking, not what is reflected in reality.
> We have a lot of trade deals and have created new ones while Trump has been in office. Countries have willingly negotiated with us and us with them. What you are writing is ideological wishful thinking, not what is reflected in reality.
Those trade deals aren't worth the paper they're written on while Trump is around. Everybody is aware of this, the only difference is that Trump seems to think he's the only one who knows.
> Those trade deals aren't worth the paper they're written on while Trump is around. Everybody is aware of this, the only difference is that Trump seems to think he's the only one who knows.
But they are still real trade deals, the rules are still followed, &c.
Your personal distaste for Donald Trump (I believe he belongs in jail and didn't vote for him either time) doesn't change that fact.
> But they are still real trade deals, the rules are still followed, &c.
No, that's the point, they're not.
> Your personal distaste for Donald Trump (I believe he belongs in jail and didn't vote for him either time) doesn't change that fact.
Same in reverse. He could be everyone's favourite uncle and it would still be rendering the US's word worthless.
Me, I'm not eligible to vote for him, what with having repeatedly turned down opportunities to move to the USA, the most recent occasion of which having been in 2016 specifically due to him having won.
Do you want me to quote formal trade agreements that were made or are you able to just do a Google search yourself and see?
> Same in reverse. He could be everyone's favourite uncle and it would still be rendering the US's word worthless.
Ok our word is worthless and all that stuff so who cares then what anyone in Europe or whatever thinks.
Oh well so sad we should withdraw from NATO immediately, send troops back to the US, and remove sanctions on Russia so we can bring down gas prices - who cares what Europe thinks since our word is worthless and all.
Guess we'll just have to keep doing whatever we're doing.
> Do you want me to quote formal trade agreements that were made or are you able to just do a Google search yourself and see?
I wrote "Those trade deals aren't worth the paper they're written on", you seem to be responding as if I wrote "nonexistent".
> Oh well so sad we should withdraw from NATO immediately, send troops back to the US, and remove sanctions on Russia so we can bring down gas prices - who cares what Europe thinks since our word is worthless and all.
Those troops are in Europe for your benefit, more than ours. Those bases are a big part of how the USA gets to do force projection.
Can you really not see the cost to yourself? Your reaction is like committing suicide after getting caught cheating. You're not coming back from cheating, but if you really, genuinely, seriously, cannot see how much worse it can get… wow, things are going to get so much worse.
> I wrote "Those trade deals aren't worth the paper they're written on", you seem to be responding as if I wrote "nonexistent".
That's just your opinion though. I say they're worth the paper they're written on, and other countries have agreed to them and are following them. That's my opinion, and the opinion of the countries who have signed and are following trade deals.
So it's like, me, America, the countries we've done trade deals with
and then there's you who disagree with all of us.
> Those troops are in Europe for your benefit, more than ours. Those bases are how you get to do force projection.
This is cope. Certainly those bases do benefit the United States, but it's not as lopsided as you are making it out to be. If the US turned to be more isolationist (not something I advocate really) we wouldn't need those bases to, say, project power in the Middle East or provide a backstop to Europe due to Russia. And we know this is true because when the United States under Trump has threatened or started to remove troops, the NATO alliance and European leaders either treaded carefully, or made overtures to keep the troops/bases operational in Europe. I don't know why people keep parroting these talking points - they really don't make a lot of sense.
Like if you are going to claim those bases are just there for our benefit, then why do you care if we remove them? Leave us alone and let us make our own choices.
> Can you really not see the cost to yourself? Your reaction is like committing suicide after getting caught cheating. You're not coming back from cheating, but if you really, genuinely, seriously, cannot see how much worse it can get… wow.
Sure, I see the cost. The degradation of these relationships is not something I advocate for. But if you're saying everything is done and over, untrustworthy, &c. then sure it's over - it's just like you said and want. So why do you keep trying?
> Do you want me to quote formal trade agreements that were made or are you able to just do a Google search yourself and see?
Are there any actual formal trade agreements, ratified by Congress (like CUSMA)?
Most of them seem to be hand-wavy executive actions, full of caveats and outs, sitting upon the unstable legal foundation of illegal tariffs, dubious legal theories, and front-running the courts. Signed by an executive with a long history of dishonesty, reneging on deals, and criminality.
> Most of them seem to be hand-wavy executive actions, full of caveats and outs, sitting upon the unstable legal foundation of illegal tariffs, dubious legal theories, and front-running the courts. Signed by an executive with a long history of dishonesty, reneging on deals, and criminality.
Fair but then that criticism goes back pretty far and is bipartisan. I don't think it's fair to single Trump out for this. Congress (Republicans and Democrats both) have been abdicating their responsibility and deferring to the courts or the Executive for over 20 years and it gets worse every year.
Of course it is fair to single out Trump. No other president has pursued this strategy. In the case of Canada, there was the original free trade agreement (Reagan), NAFTA (Bush I/Clinton), and even CUSMA (Trump I). All approved by Congress.
They didn't implement illegal tariffs, make up fake emergencies (eg fentanyl across the northern border), and do the 51st state/Governor Trudeau stuff.
More broadly, the "he is just doing what his predecessors did" argument that Trump water carriers like to make is a Lake Ontario-sized false equivalence.
> Are there any actual formal trade agreements, ratified by Congress (like CUSMA)?
> In the case of Canada, there was the original free trade agreement (Reagan), NAFTA (Bush I/Clinton), and even CUSMA (Trump I). All approved by Congress.
Why bother asking me questions like this if you know the answer?
The legality of the tariffs is questionable but just calling them illegal as though it's a moral judgement I cast out as nonsense and not worthy of discussion.
None of these points detract from what I wrote which is that Congress under both Republicans and Democrats have continued to be dysfunctional and delegate more and more of their responsibility to the Executive and Judicial branches.
> Why bother asking me questions like this if you know the answer?
I know the history of the Canadian treaties. I don't know the status of all the other various frameworks and intents and executive orders with other countries that have been tweeted about, agreed to and then un-agreed to, etc. Maybe I missed some that Congress approved, but they mostly seem to be like peace agreements with Iran.
> The legality of the tariffs is questionable but just calling them illegal as though it's a moral judgement I cast out as nonsense and not worthy of discussion.
The more recent ones are questionable. The Supreme Court ruled the "liberation day" tariffs illegal. That's why they're being refunded.
> None of these points detract from what I wrote which is that Congress under both Republicans and Democrats have continued to be dysfunctional and delegate more and more of their responsibility to the Executive and Judicial branches.
Under this administration, it is a LOT more. A LOT LOT more.
> I don't know the status of all the other various frameworks and intents and executive orders with other countries
Then why did you assert claims without knowledge about the underlying facts? Delete Twitter, get off social media, and you'll be much better informed.
> They seem to be like peace agreements with Iran.
I'm not sure that's a good comparison because the Iranians never had any intention of an agreement. Even today hardliners and the IRGC have internal fighting with other members of the Iranian government as to what to do about the US closing the Strait on them. Hard to negotiate when the party you are negotiating with either doesn't want to negotiate or can't agree on whatever their talking points are.
> Under this administration, it is a LOT more. A LOT LOT more.
Maybe but I don't think the volume makes a significant difference. It's just further evidence of the dysfunction of Congress and it'll just get worse once the Republicans deservedly get blown out in the midterm elections.
Assert claims? I know a lot of the deals are vague/incomplete executive directives; not treaties ratified by congress. But I don't know about all of them - maybe Congress approved a deal with the penguins that Trump tariffed? So I asked you a question (which you didn't answer).
Don't take the comparison with Iran too literally; it was a gibe about yet another in an endless line of Trump deals (political, business, personal) that didn't stick.
> Don't take the comparison with Iran too literally; it was a gibe about yet another in an endless line of Trump deals (political, business, personal) that didn't stick.
Sure but you used the comparison so I did want to make sure that if we were taking a serious tone we have to realize they aren't honest negotiators anyway and there's a lot of in-fighting.
> I know a lot of the deals are vague/incomplete executive directives; not treaties ratified by congress.
How do you know that? What do you mean by an incomplete executive directive? Are you sure that all trade deals or modifications of such deals must go through Congress? How familiar are you with the US legislative system?
> So I asked you a question (which you didn't answer).
Was it a rhetorical question or are you genuinely asking? You already answered your question by pointing out a few different deals. That's why I'm a little confused. I addressed your question, even if I didn't answer it... because you answered it!! lol
Separately does it matter? My point was that Congress has abdicated this responsibility to the Executive and Judicial branches and this has gone on for decades and only gotten worse over time. The lack of Congressional approval for trade deals would just reinforce the point I am making.
Agreements approved by Congress are more politically and legally durable than something simply signed by the executive. Especially when the executive is as dishonest and capricious as this one is.
CUSMA was approved by Congress in the middle of Trump's second term. In this area at least, they haven't been abdicating for decades.
Also, seems primary blame for Trump's illegal tariffs should lie with... Trump?
> They can be repaired - but if you think they can't be, then the US should act accordingly which would mean yea go ahead and take over Greenland, withdraw forces from Europe, &c. because as you say they can't be fixed so we might as well do whatever we think we want or need to do - that's the chain of reasoning that this theory of unrepairable relations sends us down.
Irreparable doesn't make it a good idea to increase the damage, in much the same way that a company losing their trademark ("irreparable harm") can have an even worse time if all their banks suddenly refuse to do business with them.
The US taking Greenland by force means either NATO ends, or it collectively is at war with the USA, either outcome within a week or less. Similar but with different timelines for the entire EU due to Article 42(7), even though not all EU member states are in NATO and vice versa. It means maximally escalating trade prohibition (which doesn't mean everything from day 0) rather than simply the absence of deals leading to tariffs.
I will note with Suez, the British and French were humiliated, and by some the crisis is considered to be the end of the British empire. The British are not exactly beloved world-wide, despite what British newspapers will write about all the asylum seekers.
And the French didn't fully withdraw from NATO, but from the US-led unified command and the control of NATO's nuclear arsenal, to approximately quote the Wikipedia page.
Neither world war worked out well for those involved; for the British it was two Pyrrhic victories in a lifetime, for Germany it was humiliation and hyperinflation the first time around and getting quartered the second time around with active economic suppression only ending because of a proxy conflict of brain drain across what became the Iron Curtain. In both wars, Germany was seen as villainous for the next generation. The relative economic damage in Europe is what allowed the USA to become a superpower, and it only really supported Europe as a foil against Communism.
Or just look at how much the borders changed going from pre-WW1 to post-WW2.
And yet were still selling power to USA. Ford lost his right to an opinion when he decided to make noise about "Fighting" but refuses to do the only thing that could cause trouble
Correct. But Canada didn't start this trade war, all it can do is respond to it.
And the correct way to respond to a bully, fraud, and liar is tit-for-tat. Tax his exports, tax your irreplaceable exports. Tax and block his digital and media services.
Not only for foreign goods. If there's a tax on imported X, domestic X producers can now charge more because the foreign producers must raise their prices to pay for the tax.
Another way to look at it is that any tariff reduces foreign competition, with all the knock-on effects that implies.
It's not the foreign producer who must raise her prices to pay for the tax. It's the local importer. The net effect on the consumer is that the price of imported goods goes up so then, as you say, the local producers can raise their prices and increase their profits.
It is. When Canada imposes retaliatory tariffs, it is of course a tax on Canadians. Though it is also a market inducement, and one of the complaints of the admin is that Canada's retaliatory vehicle tariffs -- literally mirroring the tariffs the US applied to Canada -- caused a 22% drop in imports.
> import duties on American products which also must be treated in the same fashion for this analysis - Canadian imposed tariffs on dairy
Can you tell us if those import duties are in the room with us? Because you know they didn't exist, right?
There have been $0 in tariffs on US dairy. The tariffs only come into play when the US imports pass a certain volume -- and precisely the same tariffs happen in both directions -- and the US hasn't. Now the US has complained that there are administrative barriers, and maybe so, but they sure aren't clear on what they are, and lie about everything constantly.
Prior to this trade war, there was essentially 0% tariffs on products from the US. And the only reason there is a trade "deficit" is because of massive amounts of Alberta oil that the US desperately needs. I mean, it's hilarious that Trump was literally celebrating bringing back Keystone XL, and increasing the flow of Alberta oil, while simultaneously complaining essentially about that very same oil.
This is, as the WSJ named it, the stupidest trade war in history. All for yet another distraction, as Trump's entire base just desperately need to puff their little chests and celebrate when they think he is punching down on someone. Even if it makes their lives worse and their lot worse.
Which is to say that anybody with a $200 subscription and access to Namecheap and Netlify could have built the site in one hour flat. There's no longer any need for an NGO, media nonprofit, or lobbying group to build such things; the effort required has been reduced to near-zero, so anybody can do it.
Right but actually creating the thing is only half the story. You need to fact check it (especially with LLMs) promote it, approach journalists to bring it to their attention, etc etc etc.
In many ways making a web site has always been the easy part.
That's true... but with every day that passes it's increasingly less true. Today's best high-end LLMs are highly optimized towards fact checking themselves and each other. The winning move is to get a report from Claude and have both Kimi K3 and GPT-5.6-Pro adverserially review it. Then synthesize a fixed version with any one of them. Then adverserially review it again in incognito mode.
This sounds like a lot of work, but it takes literally two minutes of effort and it works amazingly well.
With no humans publishing semi reliable data, there is nothing for Claude to quote.
Well it's not very hard these days with social media. All you need to do is post on HN with a compelling enough headline and people will upvote it even if it's AI slop.
It's basically just documenting the utter stupidity of a trade war with a close ally with whom we are tightly coupled economically.
Because I don't want to click through to every data source to verify every figure and need some baseline level of trust about whether they've been correctly used.
If there's an error, I want to be able to contact the author somehow.
The answer I keep coming back to is I know zero people who considered that.
Does the US have a trade imbalance that causes problems, particularly in our manufacturing sector? Yes. Can tariffs kind of help with that? Also yes. Really, you need to instill some sort of sense of duty to country in business leaders, which is a far heavier lift, but this at least puts a number to it.
Does picking a tariff fight with Canada, our closest cultural ally, solve the above problem to the point where it justifies the costs? Hell no.
Canada has things that our economy needs desperately (e.g. potash).
Some things are bigger than money.
... which, come to think of it, is something that the current administration doesn't understand, at least from a "personal net worth" standpoint, and explains why this is happening to begin with.
I was born in America. About half of my ancestors lived in Canada on both sides of my family, I know my Canadian cousins, I spent time in Canada growing up/was taught Canadian history as well as American history, I have a Canadian education and half of my professional network is Canadian, etc. I'm eligible for dual citizenship and am pursuing it now, as are other members of my family, whereas we never bothered before because the separation never seemed to matter. With the recent change in Canadian citizenship laws, I'd estimate at least 25% of the Great Lakes population is eligible for dual citizenship at this point.
One of my parents and some of my siblings are Ojibwe/Anishinaabe. My paternal cousins are all French Catholic. (My dad's parents were Protestant but my aunt married into an old French Catholic family and converted.)
I don't even really know how I would separate out the two nations' influence, and that's true of a lot of people, especially those of us whose families have lived here since before America and Canada existed.
Yes, because Canada has a lot of cheap oil which America wants. If you deduct oil, the trade deficit runs the other way.
If I were king of Canada, I would restrict supplies of such materials needed by red states.
The bigger problem is, when consumers have the choice between cheap crap from Aliexpress et al and (vastly) more expensive made-in-<own country>, usually only the affluent who want to show off will be able to choose the latter.
And that is a socially explosive thing in the long term... the masses, especially the rural ones, really do not like it if they feel that they can only afford subpar crap while the "rich urban librul elite" gets access to the good stuff.
That is the stuff that in the best case fuels populist movements, in the worst case revolutions.
(And on top of that, often enough "made-in-<own country>" is bordering the legally required limit on domestic production or is outright just slapping a label and repackaging the Thing)
America then refines it and exports it as finished product or uses it internally -- one of the reasons why America has relatively cheap gasoline prices.
This "trade imbalance" is a massive benefit to America.
So just to expand on why that's the case. As a net producer of energy right now, the US produces more than it consumes. This is why it get's pointed out, that as a net producer, the trade deficit with Canada is also a surplus (or reduction in deficit) on the other side with other countries. Yes it may not be the same physical barrel that is exported vs consumed, but in a fungible way they're commodities. If you separate out that portion, we (Canada) then buy more goods from the US then we sell. And that's also just the goods trade, not including services which the US also sells more of to Canada than the other way around.
I have a trade imbalance with the local grocery store: I buy lots of vegetables, but they don't buy mine.
My employer has a trade imbalance with me: They buy lots of my labor, but I never buy any of theirs.
The term has become unhelpfully pejorative, the "imbalance" is often desirable and beneficial.
Tariffs will not bring back manufacturing. They increase prices of inputs, reduce incentive for competitiveness and invite retaliation. Look how well tariffs have worked for Brazil and Argentina or for the US under Smoot Hawley.
The geopolitical calculations regarding China and the socioeconomic conditions of working class people in the Midwestern and Northeastern United States would beg to differ.
You need to have at least some control of your own manufacturing destiny for national security reasons, and you need somewhere for people with a high school diploma to work or they start dying deaths of despair.
This idea that we have lost manufacturing and we need some push to onshore it all again is... well... another manufactured problem that isn't.
It doesn't matter what the trade policy is: Those amounts/types of jobs are gone and won't come back with demand--not unless something else happens too, like outlawing robots and making unions mandatory.
The job situation is unfortunate but these jobs will not come. China has lost more jobs to automation than the US has to China. If we want people to prosper we need to build housing where the economy is and encourage people to move there.
While we have lost tons of factory jobs, we have created lots of service jobs that require similar skills. There has been a boom around jobs like solar installation, HVAC and similar. They just aren't as visible because it's a little bit everywhere, rather than a company or industry town.
Not to mention, Canada can make nukes if it wants to. It just doesn't. It gave them up, but still has the plans.
Canada relies on US and is isolated from the rest of the world, US can strangle it economically if need be until it folds.
They can also cause divisions inside the country and disrupt it.. we're seeing this already in Alberta.
Canada is vulnerable.
The whole world is going to trade with each other, and just ignore the United States. It'll be a rough five to ten years of transition, but there's been lots of economic situations like that. The US is the past, it's relevance waning.
The US is also far more vulnerable. It's 90% of the way to a civil war already.
Alberta has been going on for decades.
It isn't just "which Americans consider trade with Canada to be a real issue," it is "which Americans think Canada should become a territory of the United States."
It's just plainly absurd. It is inexplicable to me that Congress doesn't act. And infuriating to me that my representatives in Congress don't do more (even though they are in the opposition.)
Buying and selling don't need to be equal between buyers and sellers, and it's really just an incoherent idea.
Goods are imported because business is a competition and consumers prefer cheap imported goods. Its not like american executives flatly want to offshore, if a competitor does and they dont their customers will leave. The only solution business leaders can have here is collusion, which is illegal. If we want goods to be manufactured domestically it is on us as consumers to buy domestic products over cheap imported ones.
This seems illogical. You can't simultaneously claim that the US is paying higher prices for Canadian goods because of US-imposed tariffs and then turn around and say only that Americans are paying a tax on buying Canadian goods on Canadian-imposed tariffs. Both countries are either paying higher prices or paying higher taxes. Canada's tariffs must also be viewed as America is taxing Canada back, or else neither can be viewed that way.
Separately you can go back prior to 2024, for example, and discuss monopolization of Canadian companies and import duties on American products which also must be treated in the same fashion for this analysis - Canadian imposed tariffs on dairy (I don't care about dairy other than it being an obvious example) would have to be claimed to be an American tax on Canadians for this to be consistent.
Whatever claim you would levy here, equally applies to Canada minus the dollar volumes depending on which country imports more and what products are imported since Canada is also implementing additional (because they've had tariffs for a while) tariffs on specific goods/services.
This whole trade war with Canada has to be one of the dumbest fucking things I have ever witnessed, and that's saying a lot given the complete incompetence and buffoonery of the current US administration. First they had to imitate Idiocracy with the the WFC fight on the White House lawn, now they're imitating South Park by killing relations with Canada. Heck, a big joke in the original South Park movie was that it was so inconceivable that of all countries Canada is the one we'd have a war with, but Trump just wants to speed run to every country on the planet hating our guts.
Sure that's fair, but on the other hand that's what was written and the framing I think is unfair and inconsistent. Of course, others may go along happily reading it and thinking wow we created these tariffs to raise prices and Canada decided to tax us!? That's worth clearing up and being honest about, in my view.
Imagine someone writes another article and frames it as though Americans are taxing Canadians with tariffs. Surely folks would want to "clear that up" wouldn't they?
Yes - you are technically correct that each country is taxing its own citizens/businesses with tariffs. I also agree that phrasing is more honest than what the article states
But for interconnected supply chains, the result can get pretty muddled.
Ex -
Canada sells wood to a US company. US applies tariff.
That US company sells a component made of that wood back to a Canadian company. Canada applies tariff.
That Canadian company uses that component to produce a good that's sold to US consumers. US applies tariff.
etc...
For the end purchasers of the finished product - the net increase in price (the final "tax" you pay) might be a summation of various tariffs applied by both countries as they interact with each other.
The price increases at the final sale are additive, regardless of which country is capturing the tariff as tax. The real result is that the product is just more expensive to make when tariffs are in place, and so must be sold at a higher price based on the total tax applied to all parts of the product (regardless of where in the chain it was US/Canada/China/Other/Etc actually capturing a tariff).
Ex - you will pay more because of US tariffs, and more again because of Canadian tariffs in response to US tariffs.
> Ex - you will pay more because of US tariffs, and more again because of Canadian tariffs in response to US tariffs.
Also applies to Canada for the exact same reasons you highlighted. So when they say that Canada is taxing Americans because of tariffs, it goes both ways.
You'd think that, strategically, a decapitation strike is the worst thing that could happen for a nation. However, that would be incorrect: the worst thing that could happen is this, a vain and incompetent buffoon installed in the top leadership position. With no leader you're just not making decisions, but the organization can continue operating under autonomous cells. With a hyperactive incompetent leader you're speedrunning every conceivable bad decision and everyone just has to look on in horror.
Well, Canada repeatedly elected Justin Trudeau (now departed)... so both countries have made some... interesting decisions...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WE_Charity_scandal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNC-Lavalin_affair
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aga_Khan_affair
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-43151115
I still believe his most egregious betrayal of voters was his abandoning proportional representation, without providing any justification.
Summary quote from IMDB: "The U.S. President, low in the opinion polls, gets talked into raising his popularity by trying to start a cold war against Canada."
For example Canadian tariffs increase prices and their retaliatory tariffs also reduce demand for Canadian products leading to job losses.
It's really a singular achievement to piss off such a good neighbor so badly.
Other administrations will not be able to repair the damage, because what was exposed really is that the US system allows for each administration to destroy and 180 whatever the previous one did.
But we've had challenges and issues before. The US has tried to obtain Greenland in the past. There are plenty of examples of such things throughout history ranging from the Suez Crises, to French withdrawal from NATO, to, well, 2 World Wars caused by Europe, and more and all was forgiven, if not forgotten.
We sometimes think that things in the moment are perhaps more important than they are. The news wants us to believe the world is ending to get clicks. Europe still lets Russian tourists in and houses Russian billionaires and their families despite this existential threat from Russia, as an example.
In any case, they cannot be repaired without a change in the US political system to a representative and stable (in foreign policy) democracy.
As long as the system allows for complete 180 degree turns every 4 years making any arrangement bears little value.
Business and friendship is built on long term horizons of stability. If that's not possible, we can only adapt.
No but they're getting you to click on every article where Trump is SLAMMED and Marcon is TOASTED and Canada RETALIATES or whatever.
> As long as the system allows for complete 180 degree turns every 4 years making any arrangement bears little value.
That's not true and nobody has ever really treated it as such. The entire history of the United States has pretty much operated by making changes every 4 years. I'm not sure the US has really executed 180 degree turns, but even so sometimes it's necessary to make abrupt changes because acting too slowly could be very dangerous. For whatever it's worth I'd hate to see Donald Trump elected to, idk, some 20-year term as president in the name of not making changes every 4 years.
Aside from that, this cuts both ways. You can't throw everything away after decades of helpful, and peaceful cooperation just because of 8 out of 12 years being annoying. There is no stability in that - it's just "agree with me or I go away" which isn't good for long-term relationships.
> In any case, they cannot be repaired without a change in the US political system to a representative and stable (in foreign policy) democracy.
To be clear we operate a representative and stable democracy in the United States. Other countries may not like our actions, but suggesting that US action == destabilization implies that any action that any entity takes is also destabilizing. Things don't happen in a vacuum.
We most certainly do not, the system is just nicely setup to make us believe that this is the case. In 2020 for instance, we were given an amazing choice to choose between a senile grandpa and the most vile and corrupt human being ever to walk the earth. all us elections boil down to this, the establishment decides who their 'best one' is at any given time and you get to choose A vs. B. there isn't a single other country on the planet where this is the case that calls itself a democracy. it is one step removed from china and russia, we just get one more choice than they do :)
We have only 720 members of the EU parliament representing over 600 million people. In the US we have more people representing fewer people, ergo we are more representative.
How is the president of the EU chosen? Is it a direct election across all citizens of the EU?
Don’t mistake gigantic bureaucracies for representative democracy.
It's not a representative democracy.
A representative democracy is one where all voters are represented in a branch of government.
The US system is exactly the opposite. It's a winner-takes-all democracy. At all levels. And worse, the executive represents only the half that voted him, the other half don't exist.
There's many other flaws in presidential and semi presidential republics but they are beyond the topic of representative democracies.
And no, the US is clearly not stable on foreign politics.
> You can't throw everything away after decades of helpful, and peaceful cooperation just because of 8 out of 12 years being annoying.
It's a decision that's been made in Washington to revert decades of successful cooperation. We're merely reacting to the new reality.
> That's not true and nobody has ever really treated it as such.
That's a very US-centric way of looking at this. American exceptionalism is cultural, it's not tied to a specific administration.
> I'm not sure the US has really executed 180 degree turns, but even so sometimes it's necessary to make abrupt changes because acting too slowly could be very dangerous.
You don't build international and economic relations with abrupt changes.
Business and diplomatic relations require predictability, stability, trust.
Also, be careful thinking that "acting slowly" is the worst that can happen in a mature democracy.
Giving individuals the capability of acting fast and with little limits might be the most dangerous one. Each presidential republic is merely waiting for the right Erdogan, Trump or Putin to break it.
I'd rather keep our slow and inefficient European democracies where prime ministers have to win the trust of the parliament and their own party every single day with all the bad that comes with it, if the alternatives are what I see around the world.
The US is literally a representative democracy as a matter of fact and definition. Winner-take-all in contested elections does not make the US not a representative democracy.
> And no, the US is clearly not stable on foreign politics
No country is then.
> It's a decision that's been made in Washington to revert decades of successful cooperation. We're merely reacting to the reality.
Ok then we should just do whatever we want and who cares about alliances or whatever. Withdraw troops, normalize trade relations with Russia, take over Greenland, whatever. All the decades of successful cooperation are nearby reverted and so we can now take different actions with that in mind.
> That's not how you build stable relations, trust and business.
In that case any time a country or bloc takers abruptly actions they now no longer are building stable relations, trust, and business. For example if the EU takes an abrupt action we can make this same claim.
> Also, I really don't agree with your view of the "acting slowly".
What is my view that you disagree with?
> We don't need big changes, but small compounding ones.
Maybe. Sometimes you need big changes. Like climate change. We need to make big changes (at least in my view) to address it because small changes won’t save us in time.
That is a very black and white view of the world. There is actually a very large area between acting as a close ally and acting as an imperialistic adversary.
GP is saying that the close ally bit is out the door. I think we can become close allies again if the situation requires it, but definitely won't if it does not. The USA has proven to be highly volatile, highly unreliable, and highly unreasonable.
> 2 World Wars caused by Europe, and more and all was forgiven, if not forgotten.
With all due respect, but claiming USA victimhood in the World Wars at the hands of "Europe" is a pretty fucked up and incorrect way of framing this bit of history. Pearl Harbor wasn't exactly the doing of the Belgians.
> The USA has proven to be highly volatile, highly unreliable, and highly unreasonable.
Right, black and white haha. Well if we are highly volatile, highly unreliable, and highly unreasonable why would we do anything besides whatever we decide to do? Can’t trust us, can’t reason with us, and can’t rely on us. In that case, who gives a shit about alliances with Europe?
> With all due respect, but claiming USA victimhood in the World Wars at the hands of "Europe" is a pretty fucked up and incorrect way of framing this bit of history. Pearl Harbor wasn't exactly the doing of the Belgians.
European wars started by Europeans. The Japanese may well have bombed Pearl Harbor anyway (don’t forget, the US alongside anglosphere allies liberated Western Europe at the same time Japan was being fought) but that war takes on a whole different character if simultaneously all the European powers weren’t initiating another round of their petulant and childish wars.
Let's not forget the Soviet Union, who did most of the actual heavy lifting of liberating Western Europe. If D-Day had never happened, the Soviets would have rolled right through Germany and then occupied France and the low countries. The Nazis would still have lost, but all of continental Europe would have been behind the iron curtain for the Cold War.
The anglosphere allies didn't defeat Germany so much as stop the Soviets from occupying Western Europe.
> - Nikita Khrushchev, political commissar overseeing Red Army generals during the Battle of Stalingrad and later the leader of the Soviet Union, as written in his memoirs.
> "People say that the allies didn't help us. But it cannot be denied that the Americans sent us materiel without which we could not have formed our reserves or continued the war. The Americans provided vital explosives and gunpowder. And how much steel! Could we really have set up the production of our tanks without American steel? And now they are saying that we had plenty of everything on our own."
> - Georgy Zhukov, Marshal of the Soviet Union and the Conqueror of Berlin (AKA the guy who got Hitler to blow his final thoughts out all over a wall), as overheard by a KGB monitoring device in 1963.
@Sensei_of_Philosophy, Reddit, https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryWhatIf/s/z7gcaTaxy9
World War Two: Russian medals for last Arctic Convoys veterans - https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-51726647
With that being said, the Soviets allied with Germany to help kick this whole thing off, so while yea maybe they get credit for not losing to Germany they also reaped what they sowed.
So, what's the plan? The USA imperialistically conquers land of former allies and rules the world forever with force? All countries are forced to trade with the USA? Or will the USA just operate as an island? How is this gonna work?
I don't think you realize how bad things have already gotten. We're not at the level of Europeans or Canadians burning American flags and chanting "death to America" in the street yet, but we are definitely speedrunning towards that. According to polling a large majority of the countries in the world now see the USA as the biggest threat to world peace [0]. A lot of people have also come to simply really, really hate (most) Americans. The complacency and impotence in stopping the utter madness and stupidity (or worse, doubling down on it) are damning. I wish it were different.
[0] https://www.niradata.com/global-pulse-2026 ("Global threat" section)
If people feel that way then there’s no reason to do anything besides whatever we want. We are untrustworthy, unreliable, highly volatile (anything else we should add?) and every Canadian/European is proudly chanting death to America. At that point, who cares?
It reminds me of those abusive relationships where some girl (EU/Canada) hates the boyfriend (America) but keeps coming back to him despite all these flaws. You’re untrustworthy! You’re bad! And then you just keep hanging around because deep down you know you need us. That’s why you have to keep saying the same thing over and over again - you need us and want us to act in a way that best suits your interests.
"Sure, I am an abusive asshole. But you need me, so I'm going to continue to be an abusive asshole. Why wouldn't I? You need me."
At this point I'm just going to assume you're trolling. Well done, I guess.
Every accusation is a confession.
> "Sure, I am an abusive asshole. But you need me, so I'm going to continue to be an abusive asshole. Why wouldn't I? You need me."
Well, then why are, idk what to call some folks, I guess anti-American pro-EU? still trying to convince us of anything?
It's like you keep repeating "we don't trust you", "we don't like this or that", "the relationship will never be the same"! Ok got it, we've moved on and we're flying solo now, why haven't you moved on?
That doesn't make sense. Are you accusing me of trolling? Based on what?
> Well, then why are, idk what to call some folks, I guess anti-American pro-EU? still trying to convince us of anything?
The option "the USA stops being an abusive asshole" is really not on your radar, is it?
Because that would be the obvious and best way out of the current situation, like in the abusive relationship analogy you so aptly described. You do realize in that scenario the boyfriend is unequivocally the bad guy, right?
> Ok got it, we've moved on and we're flying solo now
The USA hasn't "moved on" and is not "flying solo". It is being petty, reneging on previously made agreements and actively significantly hurting and threatening to hurt the other parties in their (ex-)relationships constantly. It's like a couple with kids where one of the parents suddenly starts behaving like the biggest piece of shit on earth. Even after the divorce that is going to be a massive shit show for all parties involved.
If the USA wouldn't be dragging the rest of the world down with it, we wouldn't care. But you are. Spectacularly and moronically badly.
I'm not accusing you of anything, but if you are going to accuse me of trolling then I'll assume you are admitting to trolling instead.
> The option "the USA stops being an abusive asshole" is really not on your radar, is it?
It's not - that's why my analogy made sense. We're abusive, relationships unrepairable, never to be trusted again, highly volatile, you name it. You implicitly or explicitly (and others) have made these claims, not me. I think we can absolutely still work together, and there is a lot of room to repair things and frankly they're not as bad as the internet people make them out to be.
But if all you are going to do is sit there and repeat these feel-good phrases: "can't trust, can't redeem, highly volatile, &c" then ok sure yea we're all those things and there's no interest in talking or trying to repair anything because you've already declared it's over.
If the USA wouldn't be dragging the rest of the world down with it, we wouldn't care. But you are. Spectacularly and moronically badly.
If someone said all of those things to you, allegedly wanted nothing to do with you, can't trust you, you're horrible, you're a destabilizing force - what exactly would you think the relationship is like? It's impossible to suggest that we haven't moved on unless you're suggesting Europe hasn't moved on and that these allegations of irreparability are just sensationalized bullshit (they are).
Don't feign innocence. You're not fooling anybody. It is so very obviously not "just lil guy USA chillin' in the corner minding their business and not bothering anybody".
But either way, the relationship is irreparable, it's all over, all that stuff so the EU and the online EU folks should just accept the new status quo and stop complaining.
I think this comparison has run its course anyway. At the end of the day these relationships are repairable and will be repaired and changed if we all decide to, and no amount of sensationalized doomsaying from people on the Internet will affect that. Trump will be gone, we'll elect some Democrat, they'll do some things, France might elect Marine LePenn, the'll do something, and on and on it goes.
It's true that the news can overstate just how much things have changed. The US and Canada remain major trade partners and strong allies, with NORAD currently in the middle of a week-long joint exercise, and it's unlikely that's going to change. But you should not expect a return to friendly trade relations in 2029.
> Other administrations will not be able to repair the damage
So if you disagree with them you should reply to them and let them know the damage can be repaired.
> and countries in general being a lot less willing to negotiate for trade agreements the Americans can't credibly promise to keep.
We have a lot of trade deals and have created new ones while Trump has been in office. Countries have willingly negotiated with us and us with them. What you are writing is ideological wishful thinking, not what is reflected in reality.
Those trade deals aren't worth the paper they're written on while Trump is around. Everybody is aware of this, the only difference is that Trump seems to think he's the only one who knows.
But they are still real trade deals, the rules are still followed, &c.
Your personal distaste for Donald Trump (I believe he belongs in jail and didn't vote for him either time) doesn't change that fact.
No, that's the point, they're not.
> Your personal distaste for Donald Trump (I believe he belongs in jail and didn't vote for him either time) doesn't change that fact.
Same in reverse. He could be everyone's favourite uncle and it would still be rendering the US's word worthless.
Me, I'm not eligible to vote for him, what with having repeatedly turned down opportunities to move to the USA, the most recent occasion of which having been in 2016 specifically due to him having won.
Do you want me to quote formal trade agreements that were made or are you able to just do a Google search yourself and see?
> Same in reverse. He could be everyone's favourite uncle and it would still be rendering the US's word worthless.
Ok our word is worthless and all that stuff so who cares then what anyone in Europe or whatever thinks.
Oh well so sad we should withdraw from NATO immediately, send troops back to the US, and remove sanctions on Russia so we can bring down gas prices - who cares what Europe thinks since our word is worthless and all.
Guess we'll just have to keep doing whatever we're doing.
I wrote "Those trade deals aren't worth the paper they're written on", you seem to be responding as if I wrote "nonexistent".
> Oh well so sad we should withdraw from NATO immediately, send troops back to the US, and remove sanctions on Russia so we can bring down gas prices - who cares what Europe thinks since our word is worthless and all.
Those troops are in Europe for your benefit, more than ours. Those bases are a big part of how the USA gets to do force projection.
Can you really not see the cost to yourself? Your reaction is like committing suicide after getting caught cheating. You're not coming back from cheating, but if you really, genuinely, seriously, cannot see how much worse it can get… wow, things are going to get so much worse.
That's just your opinion though. I say they're worth the paper they're written on, and other countries have agreed to them and are following them. That's my opinion, and the opinion of the countries who have signed and are following trade deals.
So it's like, me, America, the countries we've done trade deals with
and then there's you who disagree with all of us.
> Those troops are in Europe for your benefit, more than ours. Those bases are how you get to do force projection.
This is cope. Certainly those bases do benefit the United States, but it's not as lopsided as you are making it out to be. If the US turned to be more isolationist (not something I advocate really) we wouldn't need those bases to, say, project power in the Middle East or provide a backstop to Europe due to Russia. And we know this is true because when the United States under Trump has threatened or started to remove troops, the NATO alliance and European leaders either treaded carefully, or made overtures to keep the troops/bases operational in Europe. I don't know why people keep parroting these talking points - they really don't make a lot of sense.
Like if you are going to claim those bases are just there for our benefit, then why do you care if we remove them? Leave us alone and let us make our own choices.
> Can you really not see the cost to yourself? Your reaction is like committing suicide after getting caught cheating. You're not coming back from cheating, but if you really, genuinely, seriously, cannot see how much worse it can get… wow.
Sure, I see the cost. The degradation of these relationships is not something I advocate for. But if you're saying everything is done and over, untrustworthy, &c. then sure it's over - it's just like you said and want. So why do you keep trying?
Are there any actual formal trade agreements, ratified by Congress (like CUSMA)?
Most of them seem to be hand-wavy executive actions, full of caveats and outs, sitting upon the unstable legal foundation of illegal tariffs, dubious legal theories, and front-running the courts. Signed by an executive with a long history of dishonesty, reneging on deals, and criminality.
Fair but then that criticism goes back pretty far and is bipartisan. I don't think it's fair to single Trump out for this. Congress (Republicans and Democrats both) have been abdicating their responsibility and deferring to the courts or the Executive for over 20 years and it gets worse every year.
They didn't implement illegal tariffs, make up fake emergencies (eg fentanyl across the northern border), and do the 51st state/Governor Trudeau stuff.
More broadly, the "he is just doing what his predecessors did" argument that Trump water carriers like to make is a Lake Ontario-sized false equivalence.
> In the case of Canada, there was the original free trade agreement (Reagan), NAFTA (Bush I/Clinton), and even CUSMA (Trump I). All approved by Congress.
Why bother asking me questions like this if you know the answer?
The legality of the tariffs is questionable but just calling them illegal as though it's a moral judgement I cast out as nonsense and not worthy of discussion.
None of these points detract from what I wrote which is that Congress under both Republicans and Democrats have continued to be dysfunctional and delegate more and more of their responsibility to the Executive and Judicial branches.
I know the history of the Canadian treaties. I don't know the status of all the other various frameworks and intents and executive orders with other countries that have been tweeted about, agreed to and then un-agreed to, etc. Maybe I missed some that Congress approved, but they mostly seem to be like peace agreements with Iran.
> The legality of the tariffs is questionable but just calling them illegal as though it's a moral judgement I cast out as nonsense and not worthy of discussion.
The more recent ones are questionable. The Supreme Court ruled the "liberation day" tariffs illegal. That's why they're being refunded.
> None of these points detract from what I wrote which is that Congress under both Republicans and Democrats have continued to be dysfunctional and delegate more and more of their responsibility to the Executive and Judicial branches.
Under this administration, it is a LOT more. A LOT LOT more.
Then why did you assert claims without knowledge about the underlying facts? Delete Twitter, get off social media, and you'll be much better informed.
> They seem to be like peace agreements with Iran.
I'm not sure that's a good comparison because the Iranians never had any intention of an agreement. Even today hardliners and the IRGC have internal fighting with other members of the Iranian government as to what to do about the US closing the Strait on them. Hard to negotiate when the party you are negotiating with either doesn't want to negotiate or can't agree on whatever their talking points are.
> Under this administration, it is a LOT more. A LOT LOT more.
Maybe but I don't think the volume makes a significant difference. It's just further evidence of the dysfunction of Congress and it'll just get worse once the Republicans deservedly get blown out in the midterm elections.
Don't take the comparison with Iran too literally; it was a gibe about yet another in an endless line of Trump deals (political, business, personal) that didn't stick.
Sure but you used the comparison so I did want to make sure that if we were taking a serious tone we have to realize they aren't honest negotiators anyway and there's a lot of in-fighting.
> I know a lot of the deals are vague/incomplete executive directives; not treaties ratified by congress.
How do you know that? What do you mean by an incomplete executive directive? Are you sure that all trade deals or modifications of such deals must go through Congress? How familiar are you with the US legislative system?
> So I asked you a question (which you didn't answer).
Was it a rhetorical question or are you genuinely asking? You already answered your question by pointing out a few different deals. That's why I'm a little confused. I addressed your question, even if I didn't answer it... because you answered it!! lol
Separately does it matter? My point was that Congress has abdicated this responsibility to the Executive and Judicial branches and this has gone on for decades and only gotten worse over time. The lack of Congressional approval for trade deals would just reinforce the point I am making.
CUSMA was approved by Congress in the middle of Trump's second term. In this area at least, they haven't been abdicating for decades.
Also, seems primary blame for Trump's illegal tariffs should lie with... Trump?
Irreparable doesn't make it a good idea to increase the damage, in much the same way that a company losing their trademark ("irreparable harm") can have an even worse time if all their banks suddenly refuse to do business with them.
The US taking Greenland by force means either NATO ends, or it collectively is at war with the USA, either outcome within a week or less. Similar but with different timelines for the entire EU due to Article 42(7), even though not all EU member states are in NATO and vice versa. It means maximally escalating trade prohibition (which doesn't mean everything from day 0) rather than simply the absence of deals leading to tariffs.
I will note with Suez, the British and French were humiliated, and by some the crisis is considered to be the end of the British empire. The British are not exactly beloved world-wide, despite what British newspapers will write about all the asylum seekers.
And the French didn't fully withdraw from NATO, but from the US-led unified command and the control of NATO's nuclear arsenal, to approximately quote the Wikipedia page.
Neither world war worked out well for those involved; for the British it was two Pyrrhic victories in a lifetime, for Germany it was humiliation and hyperinflation the first time around and getting quartered the second time around with active economic suppression only ending because of a proxy conflict of brain drain across what became the Iron Curtain. In both wars, Germany was seen as villainous for the next generation. The relative economic damage in Europe is what allowed the USA to become a superpower, and it only really supported Europe as a foil against Communism.
Or just look at how much the borders changed going from pre-WW1 to post-WW2.
Correct. But Canada didn't start this trade war, all it can do is respond to it.
And the correct way to respond to a bully, fraud, and liar is tit-for-tat. Tax his exports, tax your irreplaceable exports. Tax and block his digital and media services.
Not only for foreign goods. If there's a tax on imported X, domestic X producers can now charge more because the foreign producers must raise their prices to pay for the tax.
Another way to look at it is that any tariff reduces foreign competition, with all the knock-on effects that implies.
It is. When Canada imposes retaliatory tariffs, it is of course a tax on Canadians. Though it is also a market inducement, and one of the complaints of the admin is that Canada's retaliatory vehicle tariffs -- literally mirroring the tariffs the US applied to Canada -- caused a 22% drop in imports.
> import duties on American products which also must be treated in the same fashion for this analysis - Canadian imposed tariffs on dairy
Can you tell us if those import duties are in the room with us? Because you know they didn't exist, right?
There have been $0 in tariffs on US dairy. The tariffs only come into play when the US imports pass a certain volume -- and precisely the same tariffs happen in both directions -- and the US hasn't. Now the US has complained that there are administrative barriers, and maybe so, but they sure aren't clear on what they are, and lie about everything constantly.
Prior to this trade war, there was essentially 0% tariffs on products from the US. And the only reason there is a trade "deficit" is because of massive amounts of Alberta oil that the US desperately needs. I mean, it's hilarious that Trump was literally celebrating bringing back Keystone XL, and increasing the flow of Alberta oil, while simultaneously complaining essentially about that very same oil.
This is, as the WSJ named it, the stupidest trade war in history. All for yet another distraction, as Trump's entire base just desperately need to puff their little chests and celebrate when they think he is punching down on someone. Even if it makes their lives worse and their lot worse.