Good. People are sometimes negative or worried about China, with how they spy on people etc. But for most of the western world, the real danger is US and not China. Just think - Canadian, Europeans etc are more likely to go on business travel to the States than China. You can get your phone checked at the border and if you’re not too keen about the US dear leader, that won’t be good for your US admission.
Being negative about Xi might have similar results, but less likely in practice.
You're right, but only half-way to the most realistic conclusion. Canada is stuck between a rock and a hard place. The US is increasingly hostile, because the US wants control over the warming arctic naval routes and higher border security. Greenland is just a softer target for now. However, turning away from the US (~85% of Canadian trade) to China (~8%) weakens Canada and gives political cover for the US to take further hostile action.
There's a game being played that, once you see it, it becomes clear that some world leaders are thinking about 2035, and other world leaders are still in 2015. I don't like it, and I genuinely feel for Canadians; they're a small, inconveniently positioned pawn that is getting caught up in something so much bigger than their country and leadership has the resources to deal with.
I see we've moved from the 'he's just meme'ing, he/we know it's stupid, it's not real' to 'here's why this is 4d chess and actually good'.
Edit: Since I'm throttled...
Trump has been talking about Greenland since 2019, before he was surrounded with the current crop. Good try at keeping the 4D chess con going though.
I don't believe Trump has much of any idea of the larger stakes. But, he's surrounded by people who do, and Trump has a pattern of being a voicebox for whatever was said by the last person who talked to him.
> I don't believe Trump has much of any idea of the larger stakes. But, he's surrounded by people who do,
Interesting, and what are the larger stakes? What good do you see in the 4th dimension? Can we be a tad more specific, just as much as necessary to avoid sounding like stargazers detached from reality.
>>> However, turning away from the US (~85% of Canadian trade) to China (~8%) weakens Canada and gives political cover for the US to take further hostile action.
Maybe it's news to you, but Canada didn't "turn away from the US", the current US admin turned away from Canada, despite prior agreements like USMCA.
Further, is forcing Canada to implement unfavorable trade with the US and unfavorable restrictions to China worth the risk of the US becoming a self-isolated island of no freedoms and low standard of living?
Whatever Canada does, they aren't going to make the US rich or solve our problems - they aren't the source of those problems. However, China can replace the US as Canada's top trade partner fairly quickly and without straining their economy.
Ditto, for the rest of the world replacing the dollar with other instruments, the process has already started thanks to the erratic and shortsighted policies of Trump's admin.
>>> There's a game being played that, once you see it,
I see it fairly clearly and there's nothing good for the US in it, nether now nor in 2035.
>>> it becomes clear that some world leaders are thinking about 2035, and other world leaders are still in 2015.
So, we're supposed to wait for the bright future (tm) and accept whatever lunatic actions are undertaken before that? Suspend reason, common sense... and the Constitution because the bright future demands it?
> Trump has a pattern of being a voicebox for whatever was said by the last person who talked to him.
Well, following the note-written plan of person R one day, of person V the next and of person M the day after, isn't going to generate anything other than an incoherent mess of a policies, the empirical evidence is in full agreement here.
Then, what if the last person who talked to him is being a voicebox for the last person who talked to the last person who talked to him? Where would that get us?
You shouldn't wait for the bright future, because its unlikely one is coming for anyone, unless we (the west) thread the needle through one of very few green paths.
The endgame we're in now is the sunset of the anthropocene. We're less-than one generation away from wholesale human labor automation. Good will and trade relationships with other countries are inconsequential. All that matters, literally from the perspective of "the good of your people", is having the foundations in place to participate in the automation explosion that is already happening; or being a forever-serf to the countries that do (at best).
He's not playing 4D chess... He's playing Risk (the board game from the 80's) where he needs Quebec and Greenland to attack Europe.
Or he's been looking at a Mercator map projection and thinks Greenland is waaay bigger than it is.
Fortunately I'm from New Zealand and we've been hiding off of maps for years because security by obscurity is effective against some opponents... We've even pretended it is a conspiracy against us as chaff.
Doesn't that prove too much? For example, North Korea treats their citizens horribly, but since it's not a threat to westerners, would that mean that trade deals with them are acceptable?
It's hard for me to come up with a standard that encourages trade with China but discourages trade with North Korea. I'm not saying that trade with the US is therefore a good idea. There are many reasonable moral standards that would forbid trade with both the US & China.
Honestly, the reason that North Korea is embargoed probably has less to do with the way they treat their own citizens, and more to do with them constantly threatening to turn South Korea into a "sea of fire" while lobbing ever-longer-range ballistic missiles over Japan.
NK and China are not at the same level lol - NK is almost an inescapable dictatorship, with routine mistreatment and indoctrination. If that were true, you can claim the current US is 1930s Nazi Germany, with a right wing government using media manipulation and “othering”, in a pseudo dictatorship.
Not to mention the US and China use similar “low level” indoctrination strategies (like swearing allegiance to the flag in schools)
I never said that North Korea was similar to China. I was simply applying your argument to another country to show how it isn't a good argument for whether or not to trade.
Around 100 million Chinese people travel abroad every year, and they all return to their country of their own free will. You can't even leave North Korea without special permission, which only certain workers get.
I've been to China, and I'm going again this year, I'm from the EU. The funniest thing is that China's Tier 1 cities are more developed than EU cities and offer a better quality of life.
nobody equated china to north korea. the post you are replying to applied equivalent logic to an extreme example (north korea) to show more easily that the logic cannot be correct.
An extreme example changes the logic here, which basically means it's a bad example. And if we're talking about the logic of this argument, there's no such thing as morality in foreign relations. I don't see any morality when everyone buys oil from Saudi Arabia or Qatar, knowing how they treat their own citizens and who they sponsor.
States use the "morality" argument when they need to build a narrative and portray someone as bad/evil to justify actions against them, while the real reason is almost always geopolitical interests or money/resources.
> Being negative about Xi might have similar results, but less likely in practice.
Being negative about Xi has typically much worse in consequence and closer cooperation with China might make it more likely in practice. I'm not saying countries should not cooperate with China, just that your argument is not that great.
I think you misunderstood my earlier point. I mean for most EU or Canadian citizens, the odds of being negative about Xi having actual impact are near 0 (not many travel to China), whilst many do travel to the US.. and rely on US tech.
No, you've misunderstood my point. Note that I wrote "closer cooperation with China might make it more likely in practice" - my point is that closer relations with China will increase how many people travel there increasing odds of being negative about Xi having actual impact.
You can hate the United States all you want, memorize your little red book of Mao, but you still can't become a naturalized citizen in China cause you aren't Chinese by blood.
The US has had two faces for the last generation. Bush jr. dragged the British into Iraq and generally angered the EU. That the next republican president was overtly hostile to the EU is a continuation of the theme.
It’s hard to build an alliance when one of the partners flips their fundamental goals every 4 years.
Start with Jan. 28, 2003 State of the Union address, Bush's 16 words: “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” and go from there.
> That the next republican president [...] is a continuation of the theme.
Leaving out EU part, I agree with the continuation. W. commuted the prison sentence of Scooter Libby (convicted of obstruction for interfering with an investigation the bush admin outed a CIA operative in retribution for her husband being outspoken that the intelligence that lead to Iraq where "twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat"). Trump fully pardoned him in 2018. Also, we have Bushism's and Trumpism's. It's uncanny how George W. was like a beta version of the full featured Trump Gold release. Both are/were figureheads that had people running them, the hanging chads 2000 election kerfuffle-fraud in Florida (of all places) that lead to SCOTUS appointing W. as president etc; it's almost as if that deep state maga likes to talk about is real.
Bush was trusted in Europe. We never felt that he betrayed Europe. There were tough trade deals and stupid wars, but there was never doubt we could rely on the US in this times. It was fine.
This started with Trump and Project 2025 and whatever the tea party mixes in there.
I don't think that's true. When I was in Italy in 2003, I saw plenty of anti-American and anti-Bush sentiment. eg: Rainbow flags with "pace" on them and "Yankee go home" graffiti.
Both are not friend of EU/Canada right now. But China at least never pretended (or we never saw them like that). The US however was a factual savior, then a close ally and a partner for 85 years! That is roughly 60 years longer than China was a relevant factor in the world order. It is the loss of trust / change which tortures the world. Not the amount of current trust.
Do we know China’s goal better? They seemed quite willing to punt on Hong Kong democracy until 2049, as they originally agreed to, until one day they decided that it was time for democracy to be over.
Nature is healing (mild /s), not that there isn't high risk of pivot backfiring for CAN. Regardless people forget Canada under the British and post independence was fundamentally an anti-American project until WW1. Before that, it took multiple wars and (failed) US annexation effort before CAN/US realized jawjaw was better than warwar, really when Canada realized you can't be FOB for US adversaries, then British, and even that coexistence was under decadesof mutual suspicion. Of course the chance of PRC/CAN defense cooperation is nil, US will never allow that considering all the NORAD infra, but way things are going, even generic trade with PRC (something US already does - agriculture, energy, technology) is probably going to put another 51st state annexation attempt back on the menu.
This agreement was reached at almost the same time as Mercosur, the huge EU - South America trade deal. Hopefully the American electorate is paying attention.
But now it will be much easier for the Mercosur block to finance the infrastructure needed to become agricultural export powerhouses. Death by a thousand cuts for the USA is just as bad a one fatal blow.
I don't feel that an "agricultural export powerhouse" is all that desirable a title to own on the global stage, but yes; it is within reach for the Mercosur block. Possibly the only thing within their reach at this point. Agriculture represents ~3% of all US exports, and ~7% of that ~3% flows to the EU; a very small cut indeed.
Sound like some political spin on your part, or just head in the sand.
It's how trade starts, small friction reductions. And now that trade is happening anyways, and there are newer better ports, it becomes easier to do more trade. And trade grows. With better new trade routes/infrastructure they aren't just selling the Europe, they are taking more and more market around the world.
For the USA that 'tiny' to you 3% is going to wreck a lot of red, agricultural states economies. And they then become drags on other parts of the American economy, and instead of chasing opportunities we're propping things up. Less trade impacts all trade, because suddenly things get tighter for Mississippi shipping. Train lines. There's less synergy, more expense carried by the remaining industry. Less money for maintenance/reinvestment in bulk transportation. Less money going into John Deere and all those agg adjacent companies. Less money for our petrochemical companies (fertilizer) means less reinvestment for them/worse health, higher risk from foreign competition.
For example 60% of farm exports travel over rivers, and 20% of coal. So coal shipping prices might get impacted. Maybe coal shipping efficiency as river shipping lanes lose 60% of their business there is less put back into maintaining them. Coal isn't in a position to absorb much shock, it's doing really bad already.
Chemicals are 9% of US exports. More ag trade makes it profitable for companies in these other countries to start setting up their own petrochemical factories/industries that will then compete with us as well.
Edit: You missed my entire point. But yes, the US is winning by shrinking our export market and needlessly building up competitors. Everyone envies shrinking markets. You got me.
Not 3%; 7% of 3%: 0.2%. And, even less than that, because we're not talking about 100% of US agricultural export to the EU disappearing. Nor are we talking about anything happening on any immediate timeline. But sure, there's political spin. Your viewpoints are also spun around politically. That's every viewpoint; there is no such thing as objectivity when it comes to systems this complex.
This is a good thing for the EU; more diversity in their import partners is a good thing. This is a bad thing for the EU; their farmers are about to see prices for their goods drop. This is a good thing for the US; less international demand for their products means US customers will see more stable prices. This is a bad thing for the US; because of everything you said. How it shakes out is a story for the history books; but the game that's being played right now is far bigger than you realize, and more important.
I don’t think so. This is not first time euro bureaucrats pull off shit like this. Apply cutthroat regulations locally and push through cheap imports. Then cry about local industries struggling. Rinse and repeat.
I’m against similar trade deal with US too. Or pretty much any other country. At best some shitty lobbyists used it as a scapegoat to push through a bad deal.
To be fair, Europe is tired of its farmers rioting and the general public welcomes the trade deal. If the farmers are crying about struggling against competition, I have a tiny violin to play for them.
Maybe lift all the green deal stuff on our own farmers while at it? Let’s make it a fair competition.
What’s next, let in shitty US food?
I don’t see general public welcoming it. Most people don’t seem to even know about it. Out of those who do know, many don't seem to be happy about it.
Also, fucking over our farmers in unstable world does not seem like a smart thing to do. It’s time to do opposite and double-down on sovereignty on all fronts. And food sovereignty was one of very few sectors where EU got it right. Our food is not cheap, but we got plenty locally and quality is pretty good.
I do not see any empty fields left and right. Despite farmers complaining since 30 years about every single trade deal. Honestly I have not seen an unused field ever. And as long the fields are producing food this is just a change in income or structure of an industry.
Coming from ex-USSR… I’m used to unused fields. Nowadays situation is better. Where soil is best, all (most?) fields are used. But in other parts of the country unused fields are not uncommon.
It doesn’t help that we are getting only a fraction of EU farming subsidies. While fancy machinery cost the same as for western counterparts. So Netherlands with higher wages are outpricing our farmers :D
I think it’s matter of time when more and more of those deals will reach the tipping point. And after that it will be very hard to restore local agriculture.
> Also, fucking over our farmers in unstable world does not seem like a smart thing to do.
Everyone can solve this for their own farmers. Just buy local, problem solved.
Does that mean some things might be a bit more expensive? Yes, you're paying to keep them around just like you might want someone to pay for you to be employed.
If we don't it's a race to the bottom for everyone.
It works when eating at home and making from scratch. How about eating out? Good luck pushing cheaper part of the sector to buy local. And not just pay lip service. And reality is many many people will just buy cheaper option and won’t thin about the impact.
Eh. As a citizen of EU member, I’m not happy about Mercosur deal at all. Hopefully fellow euro electorate is paying attention too. But giving how EU bureaucracy is shielded from the feedback loop, I doubt any outcome in national and EP elections could change anything anytime soon.
I feel the same way about some euro leaders pointing to China as possible alternative to US. Fuck no. Sometimes it feels like some people here want to pull off the same shit that is going on in China or US and just wait for a good opportunity. E.g. legendary chat control. But many people pretend it’s all fine and dandy just because.
It is a trade deal. It is always bad for some, good for others.
We are at a crossroads if we continue with globalism in the remaining world or if everyone is on its own. I prefer the first. The EU, Canada, Japan/Korea/other Asian states form a great alliance not associated to China or the US. Will not help military wise, but will help market wise.
Trade deals with poorer countries usually hurt the working class of the richer countries and benefit the wealthy. It's basically freedom to perform labor arbitrage.
I’m for EU sovereignty. This deal seems to go against it. I don’t like double standards when local business gets green deal shenanigans, but at the same time doors are opened for countries where thigh much more questionable practices.
Canada better pay attention to the one factor they probably already know about but they're just discounting. They live right next door to the United States of America. China's halfway around the world. They need to pay attention to that fact.
This is a sound tactical move to provide a hedge against future US economic threats.
Strategically, I do think you want to be coming up with a plan to shield core industries like auto, shipping, energy, and some parts of manufacturing (eg “factories for factories” rather than “factories for consumer goods”) from dumping / state subsidies.
It might be OK to let the PRC subsidize your solar cells, assuming you can build wind instead if they try to squeeze you. It’s probably not wise to depend on PRC for your batteries, drones, and cars, where these are key to strategic autonomy and you don’t have an alternative.
You change that by developing a competitive industry. You can use China to help with that, and don't blame them, subsidizing everything is impossible, that's not the reason for their success. Instead, try to explain your own failure - like high barriers of entry, meager competition, etc.
Canada should re-enact the AutoPact [0] (tldr: I don't see this in the wiki article, but the real benefit was; for every 3 cars sold in Canada, 1 had to be 'made' in Canada). This was ruled as unfair under NAFTA and thus terminated. It also had the effect of incredible auto-industry cutbacks.
BUT, with a new contender (China); we could re-enact it, rebuild our diminished blue-collar manufacturing base; and hasten the rollout of EV vehicles. Which is the real objective here.
But are Chinese EVs attractive to consumers if they are built in Canada with union wages? At that point people will just keep buying Toyotas/Hondas that are also built in Canada.
I'd expect quite a few consumers would still want them. Canada has cheap electricity and expensive gasoline. For those who don't live in some part of Canada so cold that the efficiency of an EV drops massively due to heating an EV can save quite a bit on energy costs.
Around 65-75% of Canadians live in parts of Canada that have winter temperatures similar to those of Norway's major cities and EVs perform fine in Norway so will probably also be fine in Canada.
The US and Japanese and Korean car companies are putting most of their EV effort, at least in the US and Canada, into the more expensive models. They don't have much that is the EV equivalent of a Toyota Corolla or a Honda Civic for non-SUVs, or the equivalent of a RAV4 or CR-V for EVs.
Honda for example only has the Prologue, which is built on top of GM's Equinox EV platform and starts at about $15k more than an Equinox EV.
The Chinese EV companies seem more willing to address that segment. Even if they have to pay union wages to build them there will be demand because it will still be cheaper than the EVs that are aimed at a more upscale market the other companies are mostly making.
Or you just setup lower price limits for cars like Europe did with China. So that state support is not affecting the market. Because guess what: producing a car in far far away land and then ship it around the world and pay some 10% tariff is also not that cheap.
the current deal is for 45000 cars, which they think will be all sold in 90 days or less, then there is mention of BYD building a plant in Canada, with whatever balance of imports and domestic production gets agreed on, so there is room and time for something like Autopact with China
Nova Scotia here, off grid, realy want to build a new bigger solar pv set up with sodium batteries, and design for whole house, shop, and car charging.
Time for that is looking like now!
The time to negotiate that would have been before this announcement. Carney has doomed Canada's auto industry because he is negotiating with his emotions.
The deal allows up to 70,000 cars a year by 2030 to be imported at the reduced tariff. Canadians buy 1.5-2 million cars per year, and roughly a quarter million EVs per year.
If this deal as reported somehow manages to doom the Canadian auto industry, then our auto industry was probably somehow doomed anyways.
I don’t see how. Chinese manufacturers aren’t going to setup multi billion dollar plants without some market presence, that comes after.
Letting in some small amount of Chinese EVs for so they can test the waters seems sensible all around. If they are popular then negotiate on local manufacturing to allow a larger market share.
Very curious if this will result in US tariffs for car imports from Canada.
Also curious how those tariffs would be justified (they‘re always using Terrence Howard math but at least pretending to be analytical). „Canada has to pay because China bad“?
Trump could increase the tariffs he already set in April 2025 for new cars manufactured in Canada. Depending on the car model the increases vary between 2500 and 15000 USD.
Trump said, “Well, that's OK, that's what you should be doing. I mean, it's a good thing for him to sign a trade deal. If you can get a deal with China, you should do that, right?”, so he doesn't seem annoyed by it so why would he impose tariffs?
FAFO* goes both ways. US is in an interesting spot. We have a 1 one-time reset button: Since we’re the reserve currency we can inflate out debt away at the cost of inflation. If and when we do that the world will pivot away, maybe, to another currency. At that point the great American tailwind will be over and we’ll have to be competitive at the global stage — interesting to see what that means, if anything.
As an analogy, imagine you’ve accumulated enough debt and bought yourself a house, a car, and invested in enough productive unseizable assets (very important), like a farm and whatnot, to sustain yourself. what’s the point in servicing your debt? If the only consequence is no one will lend you again, you already have everything so whatever, right?
I can poke a million flaws in this logic, but I _think_ that’s the megasupersmart move the current administration is gunning for. Hell do I know how it will pan out, but I have a hunch. FAFO I guess.
I think the flaw in your thinking is that you assume the US is self-sufficient. If that was the case there would be a very small trade deficit and given the sherade about tariffs early last year, this is not the case (IMHO).
As an external person which is actually benefitting from Trump's shanenigans (I am paid in CHF, which are worth more and more as they are considered probably the safest currency there is) I think the current US Administration wants to thread the needle by devaluating the currency enough that debt becomes manageable and exports benefit from a weak USD while remaining the reserve currency.
However, I also believe that for this plan to work you shouldn't alienate your closest allies as they will go trade elsewhere, impose tariffs on you, or trade in Yuans just to spite you. So you are left with a weak currency that is not as important anymore and basically unchanged exports.
There is no secondary reserve currency the world can look to. The world is becoming increasingly hostile and unstable, and no one is in this position, or seems fit to serve this position, in the next twenty years. Its also the case that the US still has a goal of maintaining low inflation, and I think its likely we would pursue austerity on benefits before we would intentionally succumb to higher levels of inflation (as we already have).
Or, you grow the pie. Look to history to learn how empires of the past grew their pies.
Any country willing to not be lent to again in future can default on their debts, nothing special there; the actual clever bit is stringing out the ability to accumulate debt at relatively low cost into decades of investment... something they seem to be willing to sacrifice to well and truly own the libs. The sadder reality is that there isn't any megasupersmart strategy, just an ageing buffoon with the foreign policy savvy of a middle schooler who's just heard about the Louisiana purchase and tariffs, and a bunch of grifters hanging on.
The experiment in "is America too big to fail" is probably going to result in a "not quite" answer, but they're really giving it a go.
Spain in the 1500s, the Netherlands in the 1600s and the British empire in the 1800s are good examples of countries considered too big to fail that they eventually crashed and burned and lost their world leader statuses rather fast.
In all three cases over reliance on new debt to fund stuff, disappearance of the middle class, and abusing their dominance (military and/or economic) made them crumble as other countries steered away from dealing with them.
Foreigners don't need to own fixed-interest securities. They can also invest in other US assets, such as the stock market. That's quite a good inflation hedge, so long as the US remains a good place to invest.
Except, apart from tech, there is no good place to invest in the US, especially given the headwinds in the current macro environment. And tech is super overvalued now.
There's a lot of investor capital moving to traditional industries in China, India, Brazil, Korea and Europe, simply because there's better returns to be made with more resilience to American problems.
Remove the top 7 companies in the S&P 500 (which are all extremely overvalued anyways), and you'll find a very unhealthy S&P. Take into account American dollar devaluation and even the most laggardly of these markets (Europe) outperforms the S&P500.
There's certainly no reason for Canada to consider significant EV imports from the US - I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla was tainted based on Musk's association with Trump and there aren't really other major US EV producers. For international manufacturers it probably makes more sense to have direct trade agreements with Canada vs possible significant tariffs in response to whatever Cheetolini decides to do on any given day.
Nearly every day, I wonder what the top Republican leaders honestly think about these foreseeable outcomes. They made a deal with the devil -power at any cost.
It is going to be a rough ride as America re-calibrates to a world which no longer relies on it. We took enormous amounts of benefits for granted.
That will not be that easy this time. Too direct is the elemination of any international collaboration a result of the Trump / Project 2025 leadership.
They've literally been doing it for over 50 years at this point while winning races, respectfully I think you overestimate the intelligence of the average voter.
There's a significant percentage of voters who will believe, no matter what, that what's going on right now is the fault of the Democrats. Hell, Federal agents are killing people in the streets on camera and a significant percentage of the population is OK with it.
No, they haven't. There's a complete shift in US foreign policy and things are happening which are unprecedented. There's no continuation of anything of the past 50 years, Republican or Democrat.
Wrecking the economy and blaming the Democrats are exactly what the GOP has done the last 50 years. I'm not saying that their current foreign policy has precedence, but their plan to deal with whatever fallout is coming is going to be to blame the dems, because that's what they've always done.
What's unprecedented? And since when? USA has been invading places and pushing their empire for decades. Maybe you mean unprecedented in your (short?) lifetime?
What’s unprecedented in the context of the past 50 years is undermining NATO, getting cozy with the Russians at the expense of allies, making territorial advances at the expense of allies, politically and economically attacking EU, enacting protectionist economic policies and granting unlimited White House access to Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
Reagan destroyed the pre-existing political system, racked up the debt, and cut taxes on the rich, and Republicans have ran and won on that ever since.
There will be voters who are children now or not even born yet that will be suffering the consequences of Trumps actions and policies 20 years from now, and he will be long dead and too far removed for them to blame anyone but whoever is charge at that moment*
Just like there are young voters today who blame consequences of Reagan and Bush on current leaders. Just like literally every cycle for the last 30 years Republicans fuck an insane amount of shit up and try to break the economy and then dems have to work doubly hard to do a shit repair job while being fought tooth and nail and then they get blamed for the lack of progress.
The Greenland topic has the potential to disrupt the relations with Europe (and the NATO, by association) even more than the Ukraine/Russia one. Today he announced new 10% tariffs, to be increased to 25% in June if Greenland isn’t sold to the US.
Enforce is not the right word. The court can't enforce anything really, they don't control and police or army, they rely on the Executive to enforce anything. Really they only have moral suasion.
There was a "Never Trump" movement of Republican leaders. It's dead.[1]
By now, most of the Never Trumpers are either out of power or have groveled to Trump.
The National Review, a conservative publication, wrote: "At no point did Never Trump possess the basic traits of a political movement: a small number of leaders and large number of followers." It was all leaders, or former leaders, or people who thought they should be leaders. The article says Never Trump was composed of "1) experts in foreign policy, economics, and law ... 2) campaign professionals ... and 3) public intellectuals ..." Not Republican governors and members of Congress.
Not big donors. Those people only matter when they're in power. There are small conservative journals in which they still write. Few read them. They're not on Fox News.
It's not at all clear what the GOP looks like after Trump. The most likely Republican successors are said to be Vance, Rubio, and DeSantis. The last two have failed badly at presidential bids before.
No. You can see this on what happened to a recent bill for a drinking water project in Colorado.
It was so uncontroversial that it passed the House by unanimous consent. That doesn't mean 100% were for it, but it means any who were not didn't think it was worth making even a token effort to stop it.
In the Senate they passed it on a voice vote, which is what they use for routine and completely non-controversial bills. They are all asked to say yea or nay, and the presiding officer calls it for whichever they think they heard the most of and if no one objects that they misheard it passes.
Trump vetoed it. The official reason given was some bullshit about costs, but no one believes that. The leading theories are that it is because it is important to Lauren Boebert's district and because Colorado won't release Tina Peters from prison.
Boebert upset Trump by being one of the Republican House votes to force the release of the Epstein files.
Tina Peters was an election official who did various illegal and shady things [1] that Trump approves of.
The House failed to override the veto. They are so afraid of angering Trump that they couldn't get 1/3 of Republican House members to to go against Trump on something that they themselves had just recently found completely uncontroversial.
I wonder how many will simply become "Trump Republicans" and follow some other leader when he's gone? Or will some simply pretend to wake up and have realized they had Trump Derangement Syndrome the whole time and are ready to come back to reality?
These people aren't temporarily insane, they have always been this way. The same hatred and stupidity have been prevalent in US dinnertable discussions for decades, but much less in the actual halls of power because we used to have more collective sense to not grant people like that authority over others in general. If the rest of American society regains its agency, the toxic %25 will just go back to corroding the country as they were before. They are secure in knowing they will not be treated in the way they would treat others if given the opportunity.
My guess is politics are so divisive and social media so effective that until something significant breaks/Trump succeeds in complete Putin-esque capture of the government that we will see the president flip parties every 4 years indefinitely. People will continue to vote for whoever the current leader of their "team" is no matter their actual politics or values or even how they were chosen as leader for that matter because the perceived cost of the other side winning is always greater.
As soon as Trump dies there will be an increasing avalanche of "always never-trumpers", until 40 years from now it will be almost impossible to find anyone who admits to having voted for him. I already have anecdotal experiences of having conversations with people (on tape) in early 2017 celebrating/defending their vote of Trump who now claim to have never voted for him and say that anything on video was just a joke or sarcasm.
Agreed completely. Part of this deal is that the Canadian auto market is no longer protected against Chinese EVs which substantially undercut the legacies. There is also news that the Europeans are making about to make a similar deal with China. Imagine what the United States economy will be like if Stellantis, Ford, or GM or all of them go bankrupt. 3-4 million in lost jobs alone.
Trump wants to tariff countries that support Denmark and Greenland. That's like all of the other NATO countries. What happens if NATO doesn't exist? No more bases to support Middle East operations and no more intelligence sharing.
It will mean more support from the Canadians and Europeans for moving trade to be denominated by Renminbi.
I don't think the Republican leadership has thought through the implications to the US with their deal with the devil.
This is a negative-sum choice being made by everyone but China. Chinese cars will decimate the European motor industry. Volvo is already gone. BMW, Porsche, Volkswagen will follow. This will hurt Europe a lot more than it will hurt America.
The pressures of a democratic society will force Western governments to extract money from their productive sectors and redirect them to their comparatively unproductive auto sectors.
Watching an increasingly aging Europe try to sustain its expensive welfare state while losing its biggest industries and facing a war citizens don't have the heart to prosecute is going to be interesting. Already French retirees make more than the average working man there.
They won't fight. They won't work. They won't provide children. To retirees, replacing local industry with Chinese manufacturing is a no-brainer: everything gets cheaper. With the resulting loss of well-paying jobs, healthcare for the elderly and wait staff will get even cheaper. A bonanza for a generation soon to disappear leaving the bits to be picked up by their most ardent fans.
Everyone is going to be hurt, but if you're not the US you need to hedge. Being firmly aligned with the US is too dangerous right now. Lots of negative costs and outcomes come with that hedging.
China is the only vertically integrated economy left. In a multipolar/bifurcated/low trade world they will be the strongest.
The NAFTA/EU trade blocks were extraordinarily strong, this Greenland business is exactly the kind of issue which can shatter the entire block. It benefits no one to give Greenland to the US, so they won’t do it without a fight. It provides no benefit to the US to take it.
The only thing that would really be settled by the US annexing another country on a presidents whim is the formal end of the U.S. separation of powers.
Yup. They're damned if they do and damned if they don't. They question is, place your eggs in one basket and become subservient to one country or diversify and try to play others against each other.
I don't see EU making a deal with China that lets them sell their slave built cars without tariffs. As I feel it there are a lot of public opinion against buying Chinese cars atm. Some did like 5 years ago but not any more. They are almost as dead as Tesla.
German car makes do have issues, but I'm sure they will work it out.
I don't think you understand the bigger issue. Locking out competitors will save these jobs for now, but it will not last forever. This is exactly what happened to the US automakers in the 80s and look at them now.
> This will hurt Europe a lot more than it will hurt America.
It will hurt Europe a lot. But Donald Trump keeps repeating that it is going to declare war on the EU. Sadly, it makes sense for the EU to align more closely with China.
And yeah, the only winners from the Trump administration so far are the mega-rich, Russia and China. At the expense of strictly everybody else.
>Imagine what the United States economy will be like if Stellantis, Ford, or GM or all of them go bankrupt. 3-4 million in lost jobs alone.
They wouldn't go bankrupt. They will be saved and protected by government bailouts and tariffs, and the situation will become similar to say Russia car industry. Though, naturally, the situation with Russian cars has become so bad that even they are forced to massively open market to Chinese cars (and even "Russian cars" become more and more just simple rebadge of Chinese cars).
In short - if you don't compete by increasing productivity, efficiency, quality, you will be overtaken by the ones who do. The government actions may prolong your complacency time, yet ultimately such prolongation is just the time you actually lose falling more and more behind.
The whole world by now, 20 years after Tesla roadster, should have been driving American EVs, yet instead we have classic paradigm shift there US is Sun Microsystems and EVs/solar/wind/batteries is Linux/x86.
If he has his way, Trump will kill Canada's automotive industry. If you accept this as forgone, maybe partnering with the Chinese to create a new auto industry is a good idea.
I mean, but they're not feeding into the US's power. So they're like, buying into a depreciating asset. This actively signals the US is losing power to China given that it's _formerly top ally_ is making trading partnerships with one of it's nominal "enemies". Anyone who can think more than a month out, can see this will result in the US losing power in the long run.
> So they're like, buying into a depreciating asset
Part of the issue is that the average age of the House is ~55 and for the senate it's above 60. So they have a lot less incentive to care about that, or about climate change.
I wonder how much this makes them resistant to understanding global change. Even in my own short lifetime, China went from a place of villages and cheap factories for low end products to the plausibly dominant center of technology and manufacturing.
Those in congress may still imagine a world where China’s strength is no more than an illusion.
Reminds me of Russia post-Soviet collapse when all of the SSRs rushed to form their own blocs or align with the West, while the Russians thought they would continue to align with their former overlords in Moscow.
USA will definitely turn into the new Russia if it continues to go on this path. It has already exhausted most of its cultural and moral capital, and its tech sector is already under threat in its major allies. It will continue to stay relevant for maybe a generation or two but it will turn largely irrelevant by the turn of the century, just like the British Empire or Russia today. Assuming, of course, that it doesn't correct course.
> I wonder what the top Republican leaders honestly think about these foreseeable outcomes
It doesn't matter what they think. Trump's message resonates with the electorate much more effectively than theirs, partly because of his political brand and partly because he has a network of social media acolytes who broadcast his messaging to each segment and demographic. It's a positive feedback loop wherein anyone who dares to go off-message or criticize his decisions gets instantaneous blowback from the MAGA audience themselves, so they quickly recalibrate. At this point, Trump has built a metaphorical tower of skulls of political foes within the party (e.g. Marjorie Taylor Greene).
Despite everything that has happened over the past year, the Democrats only have a few percentage points lead over the Republicans in current midterm polling. As an outside observer: Absolutely wild. I know a lot about the reasons, but it still feels completely surreal.
Trump is not unique. You can find similar parties and figures in most of Europe. Usually the would-be autocrat populist is even more popular than in the US in two party systems. Multi party systems dilute it which just leads to paralysis until eventually >40% of your population is ok with abandoning democracy because the impacts of paralysis are stacking up (France).
The democrats have been an absolute failure of a party for the last decade and the fact their voters refuse to hold leadership accountable for those failures says everything you need to know.
There should have been a house-clearing of leadership up and down the party apparatus in 2016 and again in 2024 but nope. We'd rather hope those perpetual losers get their act together out of fear of the unknown.
The Democratic party is the reason Sanders did not win. Their refusal to back progressives in any meaningful way is exactly what I'm talking about. The dems would sooner let Trump have a 3rd term than allow a progressive like Mamdani to win the presidency, which is precisely my point.
He can’t actually do much with votes in Congress he doesn’t have. Take money from programs via executive order? Ok, I guess. Cut checks to voters with that money? Even the Supreme Court would blush at that.
They don't share Trump's message, or not exactly. They share an edited version of it. That seems to be why Trump has started insisting he's serious repeatedly. The conservative media is ignoring or toning down the least popular ideas.
It matters to me, because they were not powerless to stop this scenario. The point of a representative democracy.
After January 6th, Mitch McConnell could have whipped up the votes to impeach Trump. Forever banishing him from office. Or over the past four years, when asked, "Did Donald Trump lose the election" instead of equivocating, every Congressperson could have said, "Of course he did. Donald Trump is a loser who lost a fair election, but threw a tantrum when the result did not go his way."
Liz Cheney took a stand, and the party punished her for it. Trump was too popular, Republicans preferred to latch onto that energy, despite the consequences.
No raindrop thinks it is responsible for the flood. These leaders enabled this scenario, because they (correctly!) predicted it could help them hold onto power. Now we watch the results unfold as the world does everything to extricate itself from the USA.
I think the game is a lot bigger than even Trump recognizes, but some individuals in his circle see it. The only other country that matters is China, and the timeline is decades.
The high prices due to Donnie's policies absolutely impact me. I paid $5 for a piece of plastic that before used to cost $2. I paid $55 / fire alarm - this used to be under $30. I paid $55 for 2 dishes at a "cheap" Chinese take-out. At these prices I balked at buying some Chinese food for myself - I only bought these dishes for my son to eat.
A few weeks before the tariff idiocy, I paid $320 including shipping for an ebike battery from the EU. When it arrived, it included a bill for an additional $350 from US Customs. That's insane, I refused.
When returning to sender, the package disappeared, presumably into Customs. I'm out $320 and still no battery.
Don’t know how to tell people this, but the world doesn’t really need America to be the country everyone relies on. We may be better off with diversity. Increase your international exposure.
True. But the US want to remain the country everyone relies on if it wants to preserve the dollar as the world's primary trade, reserve and settlement currency.
Dollar dominance gives the US disproportionate leverage over global finance and allows it to shape the rules of the system. Absent this asymmetry, it is difficult to imagine US tariffs or financial pressure (or any kind of pressure) would carry comparable global impact.
Totally - it is the best outcome for the world. As an American, it is sad to see the loss of status, power, everything that is coming our way in the near future.
Likely soon corporate owned drones will protect commercial shipping routes I would think. Not sure if bad actors (pirates?!) will have their own drones.
They are laser focused on making this a whiter nation with lesser rights for women and no ambiguous LGBTQ. From all the literature it seems like they believe that this demographic reversion will over the long term solve all their problems. They are not looking to optimize for anything else now including the loss of hegemony and influence. This is going to be completely and irreversibly devastating for the United States.
I do not believe that. Project 2025 was a documented plan and is executed. Someone is profiting of that. So the outcomes are what was the plan. Question is: will it suck for the general population. Answer is yes
Agree mostly, but there's a couple outliers. I think this mentality is also shared across the isle, but the right just says the "fuck you" part wayyyy louder.
So Canada found out it doesn't have any leverage over China in this so-called trade war, that is going on between North America and China?
That is at least the logical conclusion based on the information the linked-to article provides.
What I am asking myself now is, why did Canada join the US in the 2024 tariffs enactment the article is talking about in the first place? What was their motivation?
The US president always said, that he deemed the existing contracts between China and the US as "unfair" for America, hence the tariffs and trade war. That is his official explanation at least. But why would Canada join that? That's what I want to know.
The Canada-US Auto Pact of 1965 effectively integrated automobile manufacturing between the two countries. This pact removed the previous tariffs and added certain guarantees. This effectively created one protected automobile market between the countries.
This is, of course, exactly why Canada joined the US in 2024 tariffs against China. We had all one market to protect.
> Canada found out it doesn't have any leverage over China in this so-called trade war,
For my perspective, this seems hugely beneficial to Canada in the short-term. It might even be beneficial to Canada in the long-term if the US permanently destroys the ability to build automobiles for the unified North American market in Canada.
Their motivation was protectionism, because Canada hosts assembly plants and a broad parts manufacturing base. Same as the US. This regards the targeted EV tariffs from 2024 which is the only such tariff action mentioned in the article.
>So Canada found out it doesn't have any leverage over China in this so-called trade war
That's an astonishingly weird take-away. FWIW, Canada by almost any analysis "won" this trade negotiation. China was very eager to thaw relations. Every Chinese newspaper ran a front page of Carney visiting China. They all know this is yet another brick in the collapse of the American empire.
Maybe if you just threaten military conquest more you'll reclaim something much better people built decades ago? Now the Joe Rogan generation foolishly eat up the most profoundly stupid nonsense and repeat it like clucking chickens.
>why did Canada join the US in the 2024 tariffs enactment the article is talking about in the first place? What was their motivation?
Because we foolishly engaged with a tightly integrated economy with the sort of country that casual floats conquering friendly democracies to loot their resources, and that repeatedly elects vile, unbelievably stupid criminal pedophiles? See, "America's" automakers are actually US/Mexico/Canada automakers, so we worked with the US to defend them. Then Trump decided, in his incredibly, profoundly shortsighted foolishness (being unchecked by anyone) that he would start a trade war with neighbours.
I think the most astonishing part was seeing how willing the incredibly poorly educated American public bought the silly fentanyl lie, all so that clown could claim national security grounds. This cult of personality -- one of the most vile, unbecoming liars in human history, and basically the personification of the deadly sins -- somehow convinces millions of the most outrageously stupid thing. It's astonishing, and historians must study this to prevent it in the future. Idiocracy is not a goal.
TLDR: Developed countries will come together to cooperate on matters they agree without the US, or US-dominated forums like the UN. Whether it's a group to support Ukraine, tackle climate change, increase trade etc it'll be faster and looser. We will indeed trade a lot more with China and allow chinese EVs, but there's also lots of pressure to bring down domestic trade barriers, automatically recognize European-approved products etc. Over time this will help us decouple from the US.
I'm looking forward to a less US-reliant Canada. We used to have a more vibrant and distinctive culture in the 80s, 90s so it's nice to see people travel less to the US, consume fewer US products. Like the pandemic, it is a painful external event you have to deal with, but what else are you gonna do other than deal with it head on.
Canadian reporting in. The expanded police cooperation with the CCP is not playing well here.
Plus, this is a canola-for-cars deal. 90+% of our trade is structurally American, forever.
IMO we did this deal to front run the renegotiation of USMCA this years. However, we are only 5% of America’s trade, and last I heard Trump had already walked from the table (and perhaps we signed with China because of this).
The two sides of the debate between our major parties are whether we should sell canola or LNG to China while we wait for America to come back to the table.
The percentage of Canadians of Asian descent shifted from 1.4% to 23% in the past fifty years. While Trump’s policies are a factor here, there’s a demographic factor as well. Many Canadians, especially younger Canadians, have stronger cultural and familial ties to Asia than America or Europe, and this trend will continue to play out in the years ahead.
This is true, but many of those Asians moved to Canada specifically to get away from the CCP. Others of course have a more favourable view. There are various diasporas, and they don't all see things the same way.
Good. People are sometimes negative or worried about China, with how they spy on people etc. But for most of the western world, the real danger is US and not China. Just think - Canadian, Europeans etc are more likely to go on business travel to the States than China. You can get your phone checked at the border and if you’re not too keen about the US dear leader, that won’t be good for your US admission.
Being negative about Xi might have similar results, but less likely in practice.
You're right, but only half-way to the most realistic conclusion. Canada is stuck between a rock and a hard place. The US is increasingly hostile, because the US wants control over the warming arctic naval routes and higher border security. Greenland is just a softer target for now. However, turning away from the US (~85% of Canadian trade) to China (~8%) weakens Canada and gives political cover for the US to take further hostile action.
There's a game being played that, once you see it, it becomes clear that some world leaders are thinking about 2035, and other world leaders are still in 2015. I don't like it, and I genuinely feel for Canadians; they're a small, inconveniently positioned pawn that is getting caught up in something so much bigger than their country and leadership has the resources to deal with.
I see we've moved from the 'he's just meme'ing, he/we know it's stupid, it's not real' to 'here's why this is 4d chess and actually good'.
Edit: Since I'm throttled... Trump has been talking about Greenland since 2019, before he was surrounded with the current crop. Good try at keeping the 4D chess con going though.
I don't believe Trump has much of any idea of the larger stakes. But, he's surrounded by people who do, and Trump has a pattern of being a voicebox for whatever was said by the last person who talked to him.
> I don't believe Trump has much of any idea of the larger stakes. But, he's surrounded by people who do,
Interesting, and what are the larger stakes? What good do you see in the 4th dimension? Can we be a tad more specific, just as much as necessary to avoid sounding like stargazers detached from reality.
>>> However, turning away from the US (~85% of Canadian trade) to China (~8%) weakens Canada and gives political cover for the US to take further hostile action.
Maybe it's news to you, but Canada didn't "turn away from the US", the current US admin turned away from Canada, despite prior agreements like USMCA.
Further, is forcing Canada to implement unfavorable trade with the US and unfavorable restrictions to China worth the risk of the US becoming a self-isolated island of no freedoms and low standard of living?
Whatever Canada does, they aren't going to make the US rich or solve our problems - they aren't the source of those problems. However, China can replace the US as Canada's top trade partner fairly quickly and without straining their economy.
Ditto, for the rest of the world replacing the dollar with other instruments, the process has already started thanks to the erratic and shortsighted policies of Trump's admin.
>>> There's a game being played that, once you see it,
I see it fairly clearly and there's nothing good for the US in it, nether now nor in 2035.
>>> it becomes clear that some world leaders are thinking about 2035, and other world leaders are still in 2015.
So, we're supposed to wait for the bright future (tm) and accept whatever lunatic actions are undertaken before that? Suspend reason, common sense... and the Constitution because the bright future demands it?
> Trump has a pattern of being a voicebox for whatever was said by the last person who talked to him.
Well, following the note-written plan of person R one day, of person V the next and of person M the day after, isn't going to generate anything other than an incoherent mess of a policies, the empirical evidence is in full agreement here.
Then, what if the last person who talked to him is being a voicebox for the last person who talked to the last person who talked to him? Where would that get us?
You shouldn't wait for the bright future, because its unlikely one is coming for anyone, unless we (the west) thread the needle through one of very few green paths.
The endgame we're in now is the sunset of the anthropocene. We're less-than one generation away from wholesale human labor automation. Good will and trade relationships with other countries are inconsequential. All that matters, literally from the perspective of "the good of your people", is having the foundations in place to participate in the automation explosion that is already happening; or being a forever-serf to the countries that do (at best).
Sadly, there is no "opt-out" button in this game.
He's not playing 4D chess... He's playing Risk (the board game from the 80's) where he needs Quebec and Greenland to attack Europe.
Or he's been looking at a Mercator map projection and thinks Greenland is waaay bigger than it is.
Fortunately I'm from New Zealand and we've been hiding off of maps for years because security by obscurity is effective against some opponents... We've even pretended it is a conspiracy against us as chaff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omission_of_New_Zealand_from_m...
Nice article that shows a Risk map (with a big important Greenland) and no New Zealand.
If someone told Trump that Quebec is full of Frenchies, maybe the rest of Canada could palm that problem off onto the US?
Doesn't that prove too much? For example, North Korea treats their citizens horribly, but since it's not a threat to westerners, would that mean that trade deals with them are acceptable?
It's hard for me to come up with a standard that encourages trade with China but discourages trade with North Korea. I'm not saying that trade with the US is therefore a good idea. There are many reasonable moral standards that would forbid trade with both the US & China.
Honestly, the reason that North Korea is embargoed probably has less to do with the way they treat their own citizens, and more to do with them constantly threatening to turn South Korea into a "sea of fire" while lobbing ever-longer-range ballistic missiles over Japan.
NK and China are not at the same level lol - NK is almost an inescapable dictatorship, with routine mistreatment and indoctrination. If that were true, you can claim the current US is 1930s Nazi Germany, with a right wing government using media manipulation and “othering”, in a pseudo dictatorship.
Not to mention the US and China use similar “low level” indoctrination strategies (like swearing allegiance to the flag in schools)
I never said that North Korea was similar to China. I was simply applying your argument to another country to show how it isn't a good argument for whether or not to trade.
Around 100 million Chinese people travel abroad every year, and they all return to their country of their own free will. You can't even leave North Korea without special permission, which only certain workers get.
I've been to China, and I'm going again this year, I'm from the EU. The funniest thing is that China's Tier 1 cities are more developed than EU cities and offer a better quality of life.
nobody equated china to north korea. the post you are replying to applied equivalent logic to an extreme example (north korea) to show more easily that the logic cannot be correct.
An extreme example changes the logic here, which basically means it's a bad example. And if we're talking about the logic of this argument, there's no such thing as morality in foreign relations. I don't see any morality when everyone buys oil from Saudi Arabia or Qatar, knowing how they treat their own citizens and who they sponsor.
States use the "morality" argument when they need to build a narrative and portray someone as bad/evil to justify actions against them, while the real reason is almost always geopolitical interests or money/resources.
> Being negative about Xi might have similar results, but less likely in practice.
Being negative about Xi has typically much worse in consequence and closer cooperation with China might make it more likely in practice. I'm not saying countries should not cooperate with China, just that your argument is not that great.
I think you misunderstood my earlier point. I mean for most EU or Canadian citizens, the odds of being negative about Xi having actual impact are near 0 (not many travel to China), whilst many do travel to the US.. and rely on US tech.
No, you've misunderstood my point. Note that I wrote "closer cooperation with China might make it more likely in practice" - my point is that closer relations with China will increase how many people travel there increasing odds of being negative about Xi having actual impact.
However, you can't emigrate to China. There are less than 20,000 naturalized citizens in the whole country. You will always be a barbarian, bro.
Didn’t they make it so that citizens of 75 countries can’t emigrate to the US just yesterday?
None of which is Western.
North Macedonia and Albania aren’t?
What about when they join the EU?
You can hate the United States all you want, memorize your little red book of Mao, but you still can't become a naturalized citizen in China cause you aren't Chinese by blood.
Who said I’m hating on it? Just pointing out the hypocrisy in the comment.
Both are equally bad.
The US is just less trustworthy at this point, at least we know china's goal better.
Note: both under the current administration
The US has had two faces for the last generation. Bush jr. dragged the British into Iraq and generally angered the EU. That the next republican president was overtly hostile to the EU is a continuation of the theme.
It’s hard to build an alliance when one of the partners flips their fundamental goals every 4 years.
> Bush jr. dragged the British into Iraq ...
W. and Blair were in cahoots wrt Iraq.
Start with Jan. 28, 2003 State of the Union address, Bush's 16 words: “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” and go from there.
Leaked British documents: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Iraq_document_leak
Bush–Blair 2003 Iraq memo : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush–Blair_2003_Iraq_memo
September Dossier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_Dossier
Chilcot Report: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Inquiry
> That the next republican president [...] is a continuation of the theme.
Leaving out EU part, I agree with the continuation. W. commuted the prison sentence of Scooter Libby (convicted of obstruction for interfering with an investigation the bush admin outed a CIA operative in retribution for her husband being outspoken that the intelligence that lead to Iraq where "twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat"). Trump fully pardoned him in 2018. Also, we have Bushism's and Trumpism's. It's uncanny how George W. was like a beta version of the full featured Trump Gold release. Both are/were figureheads that had people running them, the hanging chads 2000 election kerfuffle-fraud in Florida (of all places) that lead to SCOTUS appointing W. as president etc; it's almost as if that deep state maga likes to talk about is real.
There was not much of a problem with Bush?
Current administration is just bat shit crazy and hungry for personal gain.
Bush was trusted in Europe. We never felt that he betrayed Europe. There were tough trade deals and stupid wars, but there was never doubt we could rely on the US in this times. It was fine.
This started with Trump and Project 2025 and whatever the tea party mixes in there.
I don't think that's true. When I was in Italy in 2003, I saw plenty of anti-American and anti-Bush sentiment. eg: Rainbow flags with "pace" on them and "Yankee go home" graffiti.
I suppose that was after Iraq. There were huge protests against the war, but not really aimed at bush.
Both are not friend of EU/Canada right now. But China at least never pretended (or we never saw them like that). The US however was a factual savior, then a close ally and a partner for 85 years! That is roughly 60 years longer than China was a relevant factor in the world order. It is the loss of trust / change which tortures the world. Not the amount of current trust.
Both are equally bad in theory. But my point is that (currently) the US would, in practice, negatively impact Canadians and EU more.
Do we know China’s goal better? They seemed quite willing to punt on Hong Kong democracy until 2049, as they originally agreed to, until one day they decided that it was time for democracy to be over.
Nature is healing (mild /s), not that there isn't high risk of pivot backfiring for CAN. Regardless people forget Canada under the British and post independence was fundamentally an anti-American project until WW1. Before that, it took multiple wars and (failed) US annexation effort before CAN/US realized jawjaw was better than warwar, really when Canada realized you can't be FOB for US adversaries, then British, and even that coexistence was under decadesof mutual suspicion. Of course the chance of PRC/CAN defense cooperation is nil, US will never allow that considering all the NORAD infra, but way things are going, even generic trade with PRC (something US already does - agriculture, energy, technology) is probably going to put another 51st state annexation attempt back on the menu.
This agreement was reached at almost the same time as Mercosur, the huge EU - South America trade deal. Hopefully the American electorate is paying attention.
Important to remember that the entire Mercosur block has a lower GDP than just California, and around the same GDP as Texas and New York, separately.
But now it will be much easier for the Mercosur block to finance the infrastructure needed to become agricultural export powerhouses. Death by a thousand cuts for the USA is just as bad a one fatal blow.
I don't feel that an "agricultural export powerhouse" is all that desirable a title to own on the global stage, but yes; it is within reach for the Mercosur block. Possibly the only thing within their reach at this point. Agriculture represents ~3% of all US exports, and ~7% of that ~3% flows to the EU; a very small cut indeed.
Sound like some political spin on your part, or just head in the sand.
It's how trade starts, small friction reductions. And now that trade is happening anyways, and there are newer better ports, it becomes easier to do more trade. And trade grows. With better new trade routes/infrastructure they aren't just selling the Europe, they are taking more and more market around the world.
For the USA that 'tiny' to you 3% is going to wreck a lot of red, agricultural states economies. And they then become drags on other parts of the American economy, and instead of chasing opportunities we're propping things up. Less trade impacts all trade, because suddenly things get tighter for Mississippi shipping. Train lines. There's less synergy, more expense carried by the remaining industry. Less money for maintenance/reinvestment in bulk transportation. Less money going into John Deere and all those agg adjacent companies. Less money for our petrochemical companies (fertilizer) means less reinvestment for them/worse health, higher risk from foreign competition.
For example 60% of farm exports travel over rivers, and 20% of coal. So coal shipping prices might get impacted. Maybe coal shipping efficiency as river shipping lanes lose 60% of their business there is less put back into maintaining them. Coal isn't in a position to absorb much shock, it's doing really bad already.
Chemicals are 9% of US exports. More ag trade makes it profitable for companies in these other countries to start setting up their own petrochemical factories/industries that will then compete with us as well.
Edit: You missed my entire point. But yes, the US is winning by shrinking our export market and needlessly building up competitors. Everyone envies shrinking markets. You got me.
Not 3%; 7% of 3%: 0.2%. And, even less than that, because we're not talking about 100% of US agricultural export to the EU disappearing. Nor are we talking about anything happening on any immediate timeline. But sure, there's political spin. Your viewpoints are also spun around politically. That's every viewpoint; there is no such thing as objectivity when it comes to systems this complex.
This is a good thing for the EU; more diversity in their import partners is a good thing. This is a bad thing for the EU; their farmers are about to see prices for their goods drop. This is a good thing for the US; less international demand for their products means US customers will see more stable prices. This is a bad thing for the US; because of everything you said. How it shakes out is a story for the history books; but the game that's being played right now is far bigger than you realize, and more important.
Mercosur has been under construction for more than two decades, it has little to do with Trump
Mercosur has been on ice for more than two decades because the US wasn’t a huge fan.
Now that we’ve shredded the relationship with both areas, they signed on the dotted line.
It passing does
I don’t think so. This is not first time euro bureaucrats pull off shit like this. Apply cutthroat regulations locally and push through cheap imports. Then cry about local industries struggling. Rinse and repeat.
I'm not sure it would've happened without the US messing around. Other countries look more favorable now than they did before.
Favorable in what sense beyond sticking it to US?
I’m against similar trade deal with US too. Or pretty much any other country. At best some shitty lobbyists used it as a scapegoat to push through a bad deal.
To be fair, Europe is tired of its farmers rioting and the general public welcomes the trade deal. If the farmers are crying about struggling against competition, I have a tiny violin to play for them.
Maybe lift all the green deal stuff on our own farmers while at it? Let’s make it a fair competition.
What’s next, let in shitty US food?
I don’t see general public welcoming it. Most people don’t seem to even know about it. Out of those who do know, many don't seem to be happy about it.
Also, fucking over our farmers in unstable world does not seem like a smart thing to do. It’s time to do opposite and double-down on sovereignty on all fronts. And food sovereignty was one of very few sectors where EU got it right. Our food is not cheap, but we got plenty locally and quality is pretty good.
I do not see any empty fields left and right. Despite farmers complaining since 30 years about every single trade deal. Honestly I have not seen an unused field ever. And as long the fields are producing food this is just a change in income or structure of an industry.
Coming from ex-USSR… I’m used to unused fields. Nowadays situation is better. Where soil is best, all (most?) fields are used. But in other parts of the country unused fields are not uncommon.
It doesn’t help that we are getting only a fraction of EU farming subsidies. While fancy machinery cost the same as for western counterparts. So Netherlands with higher wages are outpricing our farmers :D
I think it’s matter of time when more and more of those deals will reach the tipping point. And after that it will be very hard to restore local agriculture.
> Also, fucking over our farmers in unstable world does not seem like a smart thing to do.
Everyone can solve this for their own farmers. Just buy local, problem solved.
Does that mean some things might be a bit more expensive? Yes, you're paying to keep them around just like you might want someone to pay for you to be employed.
If we don't it's a race to the bottom for everyone.
It works when eating at home and making from scratch. How about eating out? Good luck pushing cheaper part of the sector to buy local. And not just pay lip service. And reality is many many people will just buy cheaper option and won’t thin about the impact.
> Hopefully the American electorate is paying attention.
*Hopefully*
Eh. As a citizen of EU member, I’m not happy about Mercosur deal at all. Hopefully fellow euro electorate is paying attention too. But giving how EU bureaucracy is shielded from the feedback loop, I doubt any outcome in national and EP elections could change anything anytime soon.
I feel the same way about some euro leaders pointing to China as possible alternative to US. Fuck no. Sometimes it feels like some people here want to pull off the same shit that is going on in China or US and just wait for a good opportunity. E.g. legendary chat control. But many people pretend it’s all fine and dandy just because.
Why are you not happy about Mercosur? I'm from EU and I think it's a great deal!
It is a trade deal. It is always bad for some, good for others.
We are at a crossroads if we continue with globalism in the remaining world or if everyone is on its own. I prefer the first. The EU, Canada, Japan/Korea/other Asian states form a great alliance not associated to China or the US. Will not help military wise, but will help market wise.
Those countries don't export much food, except maybe for maple syrup and instant ramen.
Trade deals with poorer countries usually hurt the working class of the richer countries and benefit the wealthy. It's basically freedom to perform labor arbitrage.
I’m for EU sovereignty. This deal seems to go against it. I don’t like double standards when local business gets green deal shenanigans, but at the same time doors are opened for countries where thigh much more questionable practices.
The US doesn't have Chat Control. They use blanket mandates to ask FAANG for your whereabouts.
I’m pretty sure EU members do the same. The only problem is that such extra-legally acquired evidence can’t be used in court.
Canada better pay attention to the one factor they probably already know about but they're just discounting. They live right next door to the United States of America. China's halfway around the world. They need to pay attention to that fact.
This is a sound tactical move to provide a hedge against future US economic threats.
Strategically, I do think you want to be coming up with a plan to shield core industries like auto, shipping, energy, and some parts of manufacturing (eg “factories for factories” rather than “factories for consumer goods”) from dumping / state subsidies.
It might be OK to let the PRC subsidize your solar cells, assuming you can build wind instead if they try to squeeze you. It’s probably not wise to depend on PRC for your batteries, drones, and cars, where these are key to strategic autonomy and you don’t have an alternative.
The world already relies on them for drones and batteries, often cars.
Yes, of course, that is what I’m saying you need to change.
You change that by developing a competitive industry. You can use China to help with that, and don't blame them, subsidizing everything is impossible, that's not the reason for their success. Instead, try to explain your own failure - like high barriers of entry, meager competition, etc.
Canada should re-enact the AutoPact [0] (tldr: I don't see this in the wiki article, but the real benefit was; for every 3 cars sold in Canada, 1 had to be 'made' in Canada). This was ruled as unfair under NAFTA and thus terminated. It also had the effect of incredible auto-industry cutbacks.
BUT, with a new contender (China); we could re-enact it, rebuild our diminished blue-collar manufacturing base; and hasten the rollout of EV vehicles. Which is the real objective here.
IMHO, that would be a solid win for everybody.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93United_States_A...
But are Chinese EVs attractive to consumers if they are built in Canada with union wages? At that point people will just keep buying Toyotas/Hondas that are also built in Canada.
I'd expect quite a few consumers would still want them. Canada has cheap electricity and expensive gasoline. For those who don't live in some part of Canada so cold that the efficiency of an EV drops massively due to heating an EV can save quite a bit on energy costs.
Around 65-75% of Canadians live in parts of Canada that have winter temperatures similar to those of Norway's major cities and EVs perform fine in Norway so will probably also be fine in Canada.
The US and Japanese and Korean car companies are putting most of their EV effort, at least in the US and Canada, into the more expensive models. They don't have much that is the EV equivalent of a Toyota Corolla or a Honda Civic for non-SUVs, or the equivalent of a RAV4 or CR-V for EVs.
Honda for example only has the Prologue, which is built on top of GM's Equinox EV platform and starts at about $15k more than an Equinox EV.
The Chinese EV companies seem more willing to address that segment. Even if they have to pay union wages to build them there will be demand because it will still be cheaper than the EVs that are aimed at a more upscale market the other companies are mostly making.
Or you just setup lower price limits for cars like Europe did with China. So that state support is not affecting the market. Because guess what: producing a car in far far away land and then ship it around the world and pay some 10% tariff is also not that cheap.
the current deal is for 45000 cars, which they think will be all sold in 90 days or less, then there is mention of BYD building a plant in Canada, with whatever balance of imports and domestic production gets agreed on, so there is room and time for something like Autopact with China
Nova Scotia here, off grid, realy want to build a new bigger solar pv set up with sodium batteries, and design for whole house, shop, and car charging. Time for that is looking like now!
The time to negotiate that would have been before this announcement. Carney has doomed Canada's auto industry because he is negotiating with his emotions.
The deal allows up to 70,000 cars a year by 2030 to be imported at the reduced tariff. Canadians buy 1.5-2 million cars per year, and roughly a quarter million EVs per year.
If this deal as reported somehow manages to doom the Canadian auto industry, then our auto industry was probably somehow doomed anyways.
I don’t see how. Chinese manufacturers aren’t going to setup multi billion dollar plants without some market presence, that comes after.
Letting in some small amount of Chinese EVs for so they can test the waters seems sensible all around. If they are popular then negotiate on local manufacturing to allow a larger market share.
Very curious if this will result in US tariffs for car imports from Canada. Also curious how those tariffs would be justified (they‘re always using Terrence Howard math but at least pretending to be analytical). „Canada has to pay because China bad“?
The US has been signalling an end to free trade in north america, so that would be coming in 2026/2027 regardless.
Baked in ?
Trump could increase the tariffs he already set in April 2025 for new cars manufactured in Canada. Depending on the car model the increases vary between 2500 and 15000 USD.
Trump said, “Well, that's OK, that's what you should be doing. I mean, it's a good thing for him to sign a trade deal. If you can get a deal with China, you should do that, right?”, so he doesn't seem annoyed by it so why would he impose tariffs?
Canada total trade with USA in 2024: $917 billion
Canada total trade with China in 2024: $119 billion
total trade right now.
This move is obviously an attempt to decouple themselves from the States
FAFO* goes both ways. US is in an interesting spot. We have a 1 one-time reset button: Since we’re the reserve currency we can inflate out debt away at the cost of inflation. If and when we do that the world will pivot away, maybe, to another currency. At that point the great American tailwind will be over and we’ll have to be competitive at the global stage — interesting to see what that means, if anything.
As an analogy, imagine you’ve accumulated enough debt and bought yourself a house, a car, and invested in enough productive unseizable assets (very important), like a farm and whatnot, to sustain yourself. what’s the point in servicing your debt? If the only consequence is no one will lend you again, you already have everything so whatever, right?
I can poke a million flaws in this logic, but I _think_ that’s the megasupersmart move the current administration is gunning for. Hell do I know how it will pan out, but I have a hunch. FAFO I guess.
*fuck around, find out (◔_◔)
I think the flaw in your thinking is that you assume the US is self-sufficient. If that was the case there would be a very small trade deficit and given the sherade about tariffs early last year, this is not the case (IMHO).
As an external person which is actually benefitting from Trump's shanenigans (I am paid in CHF, which are worth more and more as they are considered probably the safest currency there is) I think the current US Administration wants to thread the needle by devaluating the currency enough that debt becomes manageable and exports benefit from a weak USD while remaining the reserve currency.
However, I also believe that for this plan to work you shouldn't alienate your closest allies as they will go trade elsewhere, impose tariffs on you, or trade in Yuans just to spite you. So you are left with a weak currency that is not as important anymore and basically unchanged exports.
There is no secondary reserve currency the world can look to. The world is becoming increasingly hostile and unstable, and no one is in this position, or seems fit to serve this position, in the next twenty years. Its also the case that the US still has a goal of maintaining low inflation, and I think its likely we would pursue austerity on benefits before we would intentionally succumb to higher levels of inflation (as we already have).
Or, you grow the pie. Look to history to learn how empires of the past grew their pies.
Any country willing to not be lent to again in future can default on their debts, nothing special there; the actual clever bit is stringing out the ability to accumulate debt at relatively low cost into decades of investment... something they seem to be willing to sacrifice to well and truly own the libs. The sadder reality is that there isn't any megasupersmart strategy, just an ageing buffoon with the foreign policy savvy of a middle schooler who's just heard about the Louisiana purchase and tariffs, and a bunch of grifters hanging on.
The experiment in "is America too big to fail" is probably going to result in a "not quite" answer, but they're really giving it a go.
Yeah.
Spain in the 1500s, the Netherlands in the 1600s and the British empire in the 1800s are good examples of countries considered too big to fail that they eventually crashed and burned and lost their world leader statuses rather fast.
In all three cases over reliance on new debt to fund stuff, disappearance of the middle class, and abusing their dominance (military and/or economic) made them crumble as other countries steered away from dealing with them.
If you don't service the debt, your assets will be repossessed and sold off.
To foreign holders of US bonds: Molon Labe.
Foreigners don't need to own fixed-interest securities. They can also invest in other US assets, such as the stock market. That's quite a good inflation hedge, so long as the US remains a good place to invest.
Except, apart from tech, there is no good place to invest in the US, especially given the headwinds in the current macro environment. And tech is super overvalued now.
There's a lot of investor capital moving to traditional industries in China, India, Brazil, Korea and Europe, simply because there's better returns to be made with more resilience to American problems.
Are these places you'd want to invest? I think the S&P 500 is a better bet.
Remove the top 7 companies in the S&P 500 (which are all extremely overvalued anyways), and you'll find a very unhealthy S&P. Take into account American dollar devaluation and even the most laggardly of these markets (Europe) outperforms the S&P500.
Remove the top 7 companies in the S&P 500 (which are all extremely overvalued anyways), and you'll find a HEALTHIER S&P.
There's certainly no reason for Canada to consider significant EV imports from the US - I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla was tainted based on Musk's association with Trump and there aren't really other major US EV producers. For international manufacturers it probably makes more sense to have direct trade agreements with Canada vs possible significant tariffs in response to whatever Cheetolini decides to do on any given day.
Nearly every day, I wonder what the top Republican leaders honestly think about these foreseeable outcomes. They made a deal with the devil -power at any cost.
It is going to be a rough ride as America re-calibrates to a world which no longer relies on it. We took enormous amounts of benefits for granted.
> Nearly every day, I wonder what the top Republican leaders honestly think about these foreseeable outcomes.
Simple. They see opportunities to blame the opposition for the failure of their economic policy. They've been doing it for decades with great success.
That will not be that easy this time. Too direct is the elemination of any international collaboration a result of the Trump / Project 2025 leadership.
They've literally been doing it for over 50 years at this point while winning races, respectfully I think you overestimate the intelligence of the average voter.
There's a significant percentage of voters who will believe, no matter what, that what's going on right now is the fault of the Democrats. Hell, Federal agents are killing people in the streets on camera and a significant percentage of the population is OK with it.
No, they haven't. There's a complete shift in US foreign policy and things are happening which are unprecedented. There's no continuation of anything of the past 50 years, Republican or Democrat.
Wrecking the economy and blaming the Democrats are exactly what the GOP has done the last 50 years. I'm not saying that their current foreign policy has precedence, but their plan to deal with whatever fallout is coming is going to be to blame the dems, because that's what they've always done.
What's unprecedented? And since when? USA has been invading places and pushing their empire for decades. Maybe you mean unprecedented in your (short?) lifetime?
What’s unprecedented in the context of the past 50 years is undermining NATO, getting cozy with the Russians at the expense of allies, making territorial advances at the expense of allies, politically and economically attacking EU, enacting protectionist economic policies and granting unlimited White House access to Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
Reagan destroyed the pre-existing political system, racked up the debt, and cut taxes on the rich, and Republicans have ran and won on that ever since.
There will be voters who are children now or not even born yet that will be suffering the consequences of Trumps actions and policies 20 years from now, and he will be long dead and too far removed for them to blame anyone but whoever is charge at that moment*
Just like there are young voters today who blame consequences of Reagan and Bush on current leaders. Just like literally every cycle for the last 30 years Republicans fuck an insane amount of shit up and try to break the economy and then dems have to work doubly hard to do a shit repair job while being fought tooth and nail and then they get blamed for the lack of progress.
* Assuming we still have elections
If only Democrats were in charge, all would be fine!
The Greenland topic has the potential to disrupt the relations with Europe (and the NATO, by association) even more than the Ukraine/Russia one. Today he announced new 10% tariffs, to be increased to 25% in June if Greenland isn’t sold to the US.
We find out on Tuesday if the Supreme Court will enforce those tariffs.
Enforce is not the right word. The court can't enforce anything really, they don't control and police or army, they rely on the Executive to enforce anything. Really they only have moral suasion.
I wonder if Trump's newly announced tariffs and reasons over Greenland throw a wrench in the Supreme Court's currently written opinion.
Are there any top Republican leaders left? In what way are they leading?
There was a "Never Trump" movement of Republican leaders. It's dead.[1] By now, most of the Never Trumpers are either out of power or have groveled to Trump. The National Review, a conservative publication, wrote: "At no point did Never Trump possess the basic traits of a political movement: a small number of leaders and large number of followers." It was all leaders, or former leaders, or people who thought they should be leaders. The article says Never Trump was composed of "1) experts in foreign policy, economics, and law ... 2) campaign professionals ... and 3) public intellectuals ..." Not Republican governors and members of Congress. Not big donors. Those people only matter when they're in power. There are small conservative journals in which they still write. Few read them. They're not on Fox News.
It's not at all clear what the GOP looks like after Trump. The most likely Republican successors are said to be Vance, Rubio, and DeSantis. The last two have failed badly at presidential bids before.
[1] https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-end-of-never-trump...
All presidential candidates failed except the ones that won.
No. You can see this on what happened to a recent bill for a drinking water project in Colorado.
It was so uncontroversial that it passed the House by unanimous consent. That doesn't mean 100% were for it, but it means any who were not didn't think it was worth making even a token effort to stop it.
In the Senate they passed it on a voice vote, which is what they use for routine and completely non-controversial bills. They are all asked to say yea or nay, and the presiding officer calls it for whichever they think they heard the most of and if no one objects that they misheard it passes.
Trump vetoed it. The official reason given was some bullshit about costs, but no one believes that. The leading theories are that it is because it is important to Lauren Boebert's district and because Colorado won't release Tina Peters from prison.
Boebert upset Trump by being one of the Republican House votes to force the release of the Epstein files.
Tina Peters was an election official who did various illegal and shady things [1] that Trump approves of.
The House failed to override the veto. They are so afraid of angering Trump that they couldn't get 1/3 of Republican House members to to go against Trump on something that they themselves had just recently found completely uncontroversial.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tina_Peters_(politician)
I wonder how many will simply become "Trump Republicans" and follow some other leader when he's gone? Or will some simply pretend to wake up and have realized they had Trump Derangement Syndrome the whole time and are ready to come back to reality?
These people aren't temporarily insane, they have always been this way. The same hatred and stupidity have been prevalent in US dinnertable discussions for decades, but much less in the actual halls of power because we used to have more collective sense to not grant people like that authority over others in general. If the rest of American society regains its agency, the toxic %25 will just go back to corroding the country as they were before. They are secure in knowing they will not be treated in the way they would treat others if given the opportunity.
At least the second hypothesis relies on the assumption that there will be a return to some kind of normalcy.
Watching this from the other side of the ocean, I'm not convinced that it's the most likely outcome.
We're on our way to making Idiocracy (the movie) a prophetic documentary.
My guess is politics are so divisive and social media so effective that until something significant breaks/Trump succeeds in complete Putin-esque capture of the government that we will see the president flip parties every 4 years indefinitely. People will continue to vote for whoever the current leader of their "team" is no matter their actual politics or values or even how they were chosen as leader for that matter because the perceived cost of the other side winning is always greater.
As soon as Trump dies there will be an increasing avalanche of "always never-trumpers", until 40 years from now it will be almost impossible to find anyone who admits to having voted for him. I already have anecdotal experiences of having conversations with people (on tape) in early 2017 celebrating/defending their vote of Trump who now claim to have never voted for him and say that anything on video was just a joke or sarcasm.
Funny how those throwing fuel on the fire are the same ones building bunkers.
My Chinese friends refer to Trump as the "Builder of the Nation" (the nation being China)
I wonder how wide spread drug abuse is among the moneyed elite and how paranoia and other related factors are affecting their decisions
When in reality Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon presidencies were the true “builders”.
Agreed completely. Part of this deal is that the Canadian auto market is no longer protected against Chinese EVs which substantially undercut the legacies. There is also news that the Europeans are making about to make a similar deal with China. Imagine what the United States economy will be like if Stellantis, Ford, or GM or all of them go bankrupt. 3-4 million in lost jobs alone.
Trump wants to tariff countries that support Denmark and Greenland. That's like all of the other NATO countries. What happens if NATO doesn't exist? No more bases to support Middle East operations and no more intelligence sharing.
It will mean more support from the Canadians and Europeans for moving trade to be denominated by Renminbi.
I don't think the Republican leadership has thought through the implications to the US with their deal with the devil.
This is a negative-sum choice being made by everyone but China. Chinese cars will decimate the European motor industry. Volvo is already gone. BMW, Porsche, Volkswagen will follow. This will hurt Europe a lot more than it will hurt America.
The pressures of a democratic society will force Western governments to extract money from their productive sectors and redirect them to their comparatively unproductive auto sectors.
Watching an increasingly aging Europe try to sustain its expensive welfare state while losing its biggest industries and facing a war citizens don't have the heart to prosecute is going to be interesting. Already French retirees make more than the average working man there.
They won't fight. They won't work. They won't provide children. To retirees, replacing local industry with Chinese manufacturing is a no-brainer: everything gets cheaper. With the resulting loss of well-paying jobs, healthcare for the elderly and wait staff will get even cheaper. A bonanza for a generation soon to disappear leaving the bits to be picked up by their most ardent fans.
Everyone is going to be hurt, but if you're not the US you need to hedge. Being firmly aligned with the US is too dangerous right now. Lots of negative costs and outcomes come with that hedging.
Not really sure who it's going to hurt most.
China is the only vertically integrated economy left. In a multipolar/bifurcated/low trade world they will be the strongest.
The NAFTA/EU trade blocks were extraordinarily strong, this Greenland business is exactly the kind of issue which can shatter the entire block. It benefits no one to give Greenland to the US, so they won’t do it without a fight. It provides no benefit to the US to take it.
The only thing that would really be settled by the US annexing another country on a presidents whim is the formal end of the U.S. separation of powers.
Yup. They're damned if they do and damned if they don't. They question is, place your eggs in one basket and become subservient to one country or diversify and try to play others against each other.
I don't see EU making a deal with China that lets them sell their slave built cars without tariffs. As I feel it there are a lot of public opinion against buying Chinese cars atm. Some did like 5 years ago but not any more. They are almost as dead as Tesla.
German car makes do have issues, but I'm sure they will work it out.
Source: https://motorbranschen.mrf.se/undret-som-kom-av-sig/ (Swedish)
I don't think you understand the bigger issue. Locking out competitors will save these jobs for now, but it will not last forever. This is exactly what happened to the US automakers in the 80s and look at them now.
> This will hurt Europe a lot more than it will hurt America.
It will hurt Europe a lot. But Donald Trump keeps repeating that it is going to declare war on the EU. Sadly, it makes sense for the EU to align more closely with China.
And yeah, the only winners from the Trump administration so far are the mega-rich, Russia and China. At the expense of strictly everybody else.
While at the same time going to war with Russia, a China ally and supporting an independent Taiwan?
Taiwan is more of an American concern. China could be persaded to rein in Russia if they gain Europe from the US' sphere
> What happens if NATO doesn't exist? No more bases to support Middle East operations and no more intelligence sharing.
if it uses its base in Greenland to annex it, the US military will be promptly evicted from every base in the world
at which point it returns to being a regional power
Evicted? They’ll be POWs.
>Imagine what the United States economy will be like if Stellantis, Ford, or GM or all of them go bankrupt. 3-4 million in lost jobs alone.
They wouldn't go bankrupt. They will be saved and protected by government bailouts and tariffs, and the situation will become similar to say Russia car industry. Though, naturally, the situation with Russian cars has become so bad that even they are forced to massively open market to Chinese cars (and even "Russian cars" become more and more just simple rebadge of Chinese cars).
In short - if you don't compete by increasing productivity, efficiency, quality, you will be overtaken by the ones who do. The government actions may prolong your complacency time, yet ultimately such prolongation is just the time you actually lose falling more and more behind.
The whole world by now, 20 years after Tesla roadster, should have been driving American EVs, yet instead we have classic paradigm shift there US is Sun Microsystems and EVs/solar/wind/batteries is Linux/x86.
Cheaper foreign vehicles will also hurt the automotive industry in Ontario, Canada. So, this is an interesting move from the Canadian fed govt.
https://www.investontario.ca/automotive
Canada has no domestic automaker and US automakers, under pressure from Trump, are closing some factories in Canada & relocating production to the US.
Yes, the Canadian auto industry will take a hit, but it already has from the US (and might take more).
If he has his way, Trump will kill Canada's automotive industry. If you accept this as forgone, maybe partnering with the Chinese to create a new auto industry is a good idea.
What automotive industry? Name a single Canadian auto manufacturer of significance?
They'll have cannibalized enough money for themselves to leave and retire
they better not be holding dollars
Property, gold, stocks from entities around the world, oil, vestment in mines.
>power at any cost.
I mean, but they're not feeding into the US's power. So they're like, buying into a depreciating asset. This actively signals the US is losing power to China given that it's _formerly top ally_ is making trading partnerships with one of it's nominal "enemies". Anyone who can think more than a month out, can see this will result in the US losing power in the long run.
Thinking more than a week out is already a challenge for the current administration. A month would be a Herculean task.
> So they're like, buying into a depreciating asset
Part of the issue is that the average age of the House is ~55 and for the senate it's above 60. So they have a lot less incentive to care about that, or about climate change.
I wonder how much this makes them resistant to understanding global change. Even in my own short lifetime, China went from a place of villages and cheap factories for low end products to the plausibly dominant center of technology and manufacturing.
Those in congress may still imagine a world where China’s strength is no more than an illusion.
Personal power. Specifically winning elections at any cost, including the cost of more important forms of power.
Reminds me of Russia post-Soviet collapse when all of the SSRs rushed to form their own blocs or align with the West, while the Russians thought they would continue to align with their former overlords in Moscow.
USA will definitely turn into the new Russia if it continues to go on this path. It has already exhausted most of its cultural and moral capital, and its tech sector is already under threat in its major allies. It will continue to stay relevant for maybe a generation or two but it will turn largely irrelevant by the turn of the century, just like the British Empire or Russia today. Assuming, of course, that it doesn't correct course.
They know they will die rich and soon
> I wonder what the top Republican leaders honestly think about these foreseeable outcomes
It doesn't matter what they think. Trump's message resonates with the electorate much more effectively than theirs, partly because of his political brand and partly because he has a network of social media acolytes who broadcast his messaging to each segment and demographic. It's a positive feedback loop wherein anyone who dares to go off-message or criticize his decisions gets instantaneous blowback from the MAGA audience themselves, so they quickly recalibrate. At this point, Trump has built a metaphorical tower of skulls of political foes within the party (e.g. Marjorie Taylor Greene).
Despite everything that has happened over the past year, the Democrats only have a few percentage points lead over the Republicans in current midterm polling. As an outside observer: Absolutely wild. I know a lot about the reasons, but it still feels completely surreal.
Trump is not unique. You can find similar parties and figures in most of Europe. Usually the would-be autocrat populist is even more popular than in the US in two party systems. Multi party systems dilute it which just leads to paralysis until eventually >40% of your population is ok with abandoning democracy because the impacts of paralysis are stacking up (France).
The democrats have been an absolute failure of a party for the last decade and the fact their voters refuse to hold leadership accountable for those failures says everything you need to know.
There should have been a house-clearing of leadership up and down the party apparatus in 2016 and again in 2024 but nope. We'd rather hope those perpetual losers get their act together out of fear of the unknown.
The internal frictions around sanders and mamdani were at least some movement in a less corrupt direction. This is more than republicans can offer.
The Democratic party is the reason Sanders did not win. Their refusal to back progressives in any meaningful way is exactly what I'm talking about. The dems would sooner let Trump have a 3rd term than allow a progressive like Mamdani to win the presidency, which is precisely my point.
There's a vox video about it: the firehose of falsehoods
It will explain a lot
Ps. Yes, insane
And just wait until all the stimulus Trump is going to drop on Americans before the midterms to make everything look good and gain back some voters.
He can’t actually do much with votes in Congress he doesn’t have. Take money from programs via executive order? Ok, I guess. Cut checks to voters with that money? Even the Supreme Court would blush at that.
>He can’t actually do much with votes in Congress he doesn’t have.
Can't he? He can't impose tariffs without congress, he can't declare war without congress. And yet...
The last declared war by congress was WWII
He doesn't have to follow through. Announcing a stimulus check might be sufficient.
Do people still believe that the tariffs are somehow decreasing taxes?
They don't share Trump's message, or not exactly. They share an edited version of it. That seems to be why Trump has started insisting he's serious repeatedly. The conservative media is ignoring or toning down the least popular ideas.
It matters to me, because they were not powerless to stop this scenario. The point of a representative democracy.
After January 6th, Mitch McConnell could have whipped up the votes to impeach Trump. Forever banishing him from office. Or over the past four years, when asked, "Did Donald Trump lose the election" instead of equivocating, every Congressperson could have said, "Of course he did. Donald Trump is a loser who lost a fair election, but threw a tantrum when the result did not go his way."
Liz Cheney took a stand, and the party punished her for it. Trump was too popular, Republicans preferred to latch onto that energy, despite the consequences.
No raindrop thinks it is responsible for the flood. These leaders enabled this scenario, because they (correctly!) predicted it could help them hold onto power. Now we watch the results unfold as the world does everything to extricate itself from the USA.
I think the game is a lot bigger than even Trump recognizes, but some individuals in his circle see it. The only other country that matters is China, and the timeline is decades.
Does it impact you that much?
The high prices due to Donnie's policies absolutely impact me. I paid $5 for a piece of plastic that before used to cost $2. I paid $55 / fire alarm - this used to be under $30. I paid $55 for 2 dishes at a "cheap" Chinese take-out. At these prices I balked at buying some Chinese food for myself - I only bought these dishes for my son to eat.
So yeah, it's bad.
And yet most of the inflation occurred during Biden adminstration.
Most of the damage comes after the arson, yes.
A few weeks before the tariff idiocy, I paid $320 including shipping for an ebike battery from the EU. When it arrived, it included a bill for an additional $350 from US Customs. That's insane, I refused.
When returning to sender, the package disappeared, presumably into Customs. I'm out $320 and still no battery.
Customs auctions that stuff off once a month. Next auction, Feb. 12th.[1] Item list goes live 3 weeks in advance.
[1] https://cwsmarketing.com/us-customs-go-merchandise-auction-f...
Don’t know how to tell people this, but the world doesn’t really need America to be the country everyone relies on. We may be better off with diversity. Increase your international exposure.
True. But the US want to remain the country everyone relies on if it wants to preserve the dollar as the world's primary trade, reserve and settlement currency.
Dollar dominance gives the US disproportionate leverage over global finance and allows it to shape the rules of the system. Absent this asymmetry, it is difficult to imagine US tariffs or financial pressure (or any kind of pressure) would carry comparable global impact.
Totally - it is the best outcome for the world. As an American, it is sad to see the loss of status, power, everything that is coming our way in the near future.
America's identity has always been founded on being the best, without that, it will be difficult to see what we're even about anymore.
Best at what?
What are you talking about? The US navy protects the commercial shipment routes around the world.
Before the US Navy did that, the Royal Navy did. The work needs to be done, but it doesn't have to be the US doing it.
Hmm, there are rail routes across Eurasia.
Likely soon corporate owned drones will protect commercial shipping routes I would think. Not sure if bad actors (pirates?!) will have their own drones.
Because pirates would never steal shipments of drones …
I’m sure that China would be happy to take over.
The gratuitous hostility undermines your point.
They are laser focused on making this a whiter nation with lesser rights for women and no ambiguous LGBTQ. From all the literature it seems like they believe that this demographic reversion will over the long term solve all their problems. They are not looking to optimize for anything else now including the loss of hegemony and influence. This is going to be completely and irreversibly devastating for the United States.
> Nearly every day, I wonder what the top Republican leaders honestly think about these foreseeable outcomes.
Do you think anyone in charge has any long term vision capability to be thinking about such foreseeable outcomes?
I do not believe that. Project 2025 was a documented plan and is executed. Someone is profiting of that. So the outcomes are what was the plan. Question is: will it suck for the general population. Answer is yes
"Fuck you, I've got mine" I think is the only thought any US politician with a modicum of power is thinking at this moment.
Agree mostly, but there's a couple outliers. I think this mentality is also shared across the isle, but the right just says the "fuck you" part wayyyy louder.
Aisle*, but I kind of like isle here too lol.
So Canada found out it doesn't have any leverage over China in this so-called trade war, that is going on between North America and China?
That is at least the logical conclusion based on the information the linked-to article provides.
What I am asking myself now is, why did Canada join the US in the 2024 tariffs enactment the article is talking about in the first place? What was their motivation?
The US president always said, that he deemed the existing contracts between China and the US as "unfair" for America, hence the tariffs and trade war. That is his official explanation at least. But why would Canada join that? That's what I want to know.
Any takers?
The Canada-US Auto Pact of 1965 effectively integrated automobile manufacturing between the two countries. This pact removed the previous tariffs and added certain guarantees. This effectively created one protected automobile market between the countries.
This is, of course, exactly why Canada joined the US in 2024 tariffs against China. We had all one market to protect.
> Canada found out it doesn't have any leverage over China in this so-called trade war,
For my perspective, this seems hugely beneficial to Canada in the short-term. It might even be beneficial to Canada in the long-term if the US permanently destroys the ability to build automobiles for the unified North American market in Canada.
>...why did Canada join the US in the 2024 tariffs...
In addition to the other good answers: to do a favour for a (previous) friend and ally.
Their motivation was protectionism, because Canada hosts assembly plants and a broad parts manufacturing base. Same as the US. This regards the targeted EV tariffs from 2024 which is the only such tariff action mentioned in the article.
>So Canada found out it doesn't have any leverage over China in this so-called trade war
That's an astonishingly weird take-away. FWIW, Canada by almost any analysis "won" this trade negotiation. China was very eager to thaw relations. Every Chinese newspaper ran a front page of Carney visiting China. They all know this is yet another brick in the collapse of the American empire.
Maybe if you just threaten military conquest more you'll reclaim something much better people built decades ago? Now the Joe Rogan generation foolishly eat up the most profoundly stupid nonsense and repeat it like clucking chickens.
>why did Canada join the US in the 2024 tariffs enactment the article is talking about in the first place? What was their motivation?
Because we foolishly engaged with a tightly integrated economy with the sort of country that casual floats conquering friendly democracies to loot their resources, and that repeatedly elects vile, unbelievably stupid criminal pedophiles? See, "America's" automakers are actually US/Mexico/Canada automakers, so we worked with the US to defend them. Then Trump decided, in his incredibly, profoundly shortsighted foolishness (being unchecked by anyone) that he would start a trade war with neighbours.
I think the most astonishing part was seeing how willing the incredibly poorly educated American public bought the silly fentanyl lie, all so that clown could claim national security grounds. This cult of personality -- one of the most vile, unbecoming liars in human history, and basically the personification of the deadly sins -- somehow convinces millions of the most outrageously stupid thing. It's astonishing, and historians must study this to prevent it in the future. Idiocracy is not a goal.
Mark Carney wrote a buzzwordy, but still informative article on his approach: https://www.economist.com/the-world-ahead/2025/11/12/the-wor...
TLDR: Developed countries will come together to cooperate on matters they agree without the US, or US-dominated forums like the UN. Whether it's a group to support Ukraine, tackle climate change, increase trade etc it'll be faster and looser. We will indeed trade a lot more with China and allow chinese EVs, but there's also lots of pressure to bring down domestic trade barriers, automatically recognize European-approved products etc. Over time this will help us decouple from the US.
I'm looking forward to a less US-reliant Canada. We used to have a more vibrant and distinctive culture in the 80s, 90s so it's nice to see people travel less to the US, consume fewer US products. Like the pandemic, it is a painful external event you have to deal with, but what else are you gonna do other than deal with it head on.
By angering a super power nation run by a megalomaniac adjacent to your country?
https://archive.ph/Tc0h7
Good luck with that
Canadian reporting in. The expanded police cooperation with the CCP is not playing well here.
Plus, this is a canola-for-cars deal. 90+% of our trade is structurally American, forever.
IMO we did this deal to front run the renegotiation of USMCA this years. However, we are only 5% of America’s trade, and last I heard Trump had already walked from the table (and perhaps we signed with China because of this).
The two sides of the debate between our major parties are whether we should sell canola or LNG to China while we wait for America to come back to the table.
Casual threats of invasion don't build solid and lasting partnerships? Who knew.
The percentage of Canadians of Asian descent shifted from 1.4% to 23% in the past fifty years. While Trump’s policies are a factor here, there’s a demographic factor as well. Many Canadians, especially younger Canadians, have stronger cultural and familial ties to Asia than America or Europe, and this trend will continue to play out in the years ahead.
This is true, but many of those Asians moved to Canada specifically to get away from the CCP. Others of course have a more favourable view. There are various diasporas, and they don't all see things the same way.
Yes, and not all Asians are chinese
What is considered Asian in Canada? Are Indians for example also included, or just East Asians?