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Canada's finance minister quits over Trump tariff dispute with Trudeau
Seems like Trudeau is floundering for some ways to keep his job and his head economist didn't approve. I'm not sure why Trump wants to mega tax Canada but it certainly can't have helped. This may end up bringing down the Trudeau government.
I wonder to what extent Trump's win will inspire regime change in western Allies.
The panic in Canada, Mexico, and Europe over Trump's tariff proposals has revealed how weak these countries are in relation to the U.S. It's basically a meme at this point. "While you were relaxing in cafes and expanding pension benefits, we were mastering the
bladeLLM. And now you have the audacity to come to US for help!?"Why should the Trump administration open U.S. markets to regimes who fought his election, in some cases quite directly?
They backed the wrong horse, and now its time to pay the piper. Trump's tariff threats are pretty savvy, and I think he will be able to extract valuable concessions on migration and defense. But better yet would be if these countries join the movement themselves, align their policies with the (IMO more forward thinking) American policies, and get better treatment as a result.
I assume you mean heavy tariffs against china in a futile bid to turn back the time and reindustrialize. I don't understand how diminishing trade between US and allies is supposed to convince them to end their trade with china. When one supermarket's closed, you go to the next one.
If you don't understand, it would probably help to work on the metaphor.
A tariff barrier is not a closing of a supermarket, not least because tariff barriers already exist between American allies. That is what the EU common market is- a trade barrier between the European group of allies and their other allies, including the Americans, the Brits, and so on.
Even more relevantly, a threat of tariff barriers is not a closing of a supermarket either, particularly when everyone (should) understand that the threat is conditional on [insert trade / political concession here]. The conditionality is critical because it can be used to create and either-or dilemma of which supermarket the consumer goes to, as opposed to the consumer has no choice.
The rise of deglobalization and the multipolar world order is not a close off of markets entirely, but a process of choosing / forcing choices of which markets to associate with. Globalization may have been a 'choose any supermarket you want' dynamic, but deglobalization is a mutually exclusive membership program, where association with one supermarket will lead to increasing limits with the other.
The issue for some countries, of course, is that the two supermarkets are not anywhere near to competitive in attractiveness. The European Family, for example, is not going to fine any meaningful offers from ChinaMart on in the 'expeditionary armies to fight in your defense' market, particularly when ChinaMart is close business partners with 'WeSwearWeWon'tBlackmailYou' Russian Discount Gas, which is currently in a special hostile takeover operation against the cousin down the street.
It’s a supermarket simultaneously raising its prices while rolling out an anti-competitive new policy where you can’t buy there if you also buy from the competitor. It assumes that the supermarket has infinite leverage, that it is so unilaterally indispensable that the customer has no choice. This kind of blackmail works until it doesn’t, like russia banking on europe’s gas dependency.
Psychologically, people prefer a less competitive supermarket to being coerced in that way. I think you overestimate your leverage, and how “rational” your customers are. I’m way more pro-american than average, and even I think US allies should tell trump to take a walk.
Who knows how "rational" Europe is in this scenario but the US has a lot of leverage. In a world where
Europe is now
The only way for Europe to collectively mitigate these problems is to build a large military, quickly, or to develop European autarchy, relieving the need to trade with China (or possibly both!) But Europe hasn't demonstrated the ability to do that. Building a conventional navy is extremely expensive and the requisite nuclear capability is fraught (I can absolutely see Russia attacking Poland if they try to develop nuclear weapons). And this is assuming Europe can pull this off in perfect harmony instead of getting locked in another European arms race or getting dominated by the only European power with nuclear weapons (France – I doubt England splits from the US and I'm counting Russia as its own thing.)
I dunno the exact numbers involved so who knows how the math plays out. But to me it seems like the supermarket has a lot of leverage.
Building submersible suicide drones is extremely cheap though.
How do cheap submersible suicide drones solve any of the problems I outlined?
You don't need conventional navy if you sink everything that moves.
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Sabotaging the ability of large nations to sabotage the shipping of small ones, I guess. Worst case I suppose shopping by sea becomes generally suicidal for everyone.
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