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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.
The US military umbrella, while nice, is unnecessary against russia’s second rate military (insert joke about joining the ukrainian military umbrella instead).
If the US and China go at it, it would be far better for us to sit on the sidelines than to be stuck in the US supermarket. The manager’s already raising prices in peacetime, we’d better get out before he turns desperate and asks us to pay in blood.
What is the threat of ‘the US becoming hostile’? Is the US going to double the tariffs to punish us from walking away because of the tariffs? Or is the threat war, blockade, invasion? If so , then the normal human pride reaction would be to militarize, get more nukes, and cooperate with US enemies, not accept US blackmail.
But neither I nor the rest of europe appears to believe that is a real threat – what you interpret as an inability to build a large army, I view as unwillingness because of a perceived lack of need: see minimal percent of GDP invested in the military, lack of nukes despite know-how.
Tacitus famously said that the Secret of the Empire was that an emperor did not have to be made at Rome . In other words, that the senate’s power was a sham and the ‘first senator among equals’ was in reality a military dictator.
Is the US secretly a military dictator, even though we peripherals pretend it’s a business partner, or worse, a friend? To me the strongest argument against is that allied US countries who could retaliate militarily after a US invasion (France, UK) have no meaningfully different politics and geopolitics compared to countries who couldn’t (Germany, Spain, Italy, Japan, etc). If anything, western nuclear powers seem even more eager to support the US, which is the opposite of what you would expect from 'hard' power relations.
First off, Russia is currently eating Europe's largest military land power for lunch. When they finish digesting, they will be bigger and stronger than they are now, both by virtue of having acquired a larger military and by virtue of gaining invaluable combat experience, including against Europe's most modern weapons systems. (This isn't a fringe view! This is the US/NATO military assessment of the situation!) Meanwhile, Europe (which nearly ran out of munitions in 2011 fighting a minor war of choice against Libya and had to be bailed out by the United States) is militarily weaker now than it was before the conflict, in no small part due to having donated large numbers of its weapons systems to Ukraine.
Secondly - if the US pulls out of NATO/Europe, it should not be taken for granted that "Europe" will act as a collective. That's the risk, I think - not Russia deciding it wants to fight a unified Europe, but rather Russia engaging in coercive diplomacy against e.g. Estonia and Germany, France and Spain deciding they don't care.
If Europe is China's trading partner, and the US and China go at it, the US may close shipping lanes to China, either by a blockade or just incidentally through e.g. mining Chinese waters. (India may try this as well in a conflict, but I think they have less capability to do so). The reverse is unlikely - China probably wouldn't try to threaten Atlantic shipping. The likely threat, I think, isn't Europe getting drawn into a war so much as their chief trading partner no longer being able to trade.
Over the long run of state relations, there is always the threat of nation-states becoming hostile to each other if they do not share interests. Personally, I think that American planners recognize a unified Europe (and China) as the only likely competitors to their dominance over the long course of history. If Europe begins to act in a unified fashion, we should expect the United States to react accordingly. (This will be by UK-style "offshore balancing" rather than "declaring war on the continent.") In fact, I would argue that the United States has already acted in this fashion.
Does Europe [broadly] have a normal human pride reaction? For instance, in 2014, Russia threatened to cut off gas supplies to Europe. Instead of remilitarizing, Germany...doubled down on energy deals with Russia. (This was not in alignment with US interests or desires at all, in case you're under the idea that Germany is in lockstep with the States.)
I agree there is - or was - a perceived lack of need, prior to 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea. And, a mere 9 years later, Germany has finally hit their NATO 2% defense spending target. Look, I'm not saying it's impossible for Europe to reindustrialize and remilitarize in the long run. But I am saying that they haven't demonstrated the ability to do so. I think it's reasonable to assume that it will be a difficult and expensive task.
I don't think it's necessarily wise or helpful to reduce complex geopolitics to simplistic roles like "friend" "military dictator" "business partner" etc. This is particularly true when US policies are not towards Europe as a whole (although I've spoken reductively at this level) but are towards each of the separate European states, and its relations with states such as England are different to its relations with states such as France or Germany. In fact, I think a lot of the US relationship with Europe after World War Two is best explained by understanding England's strategy and foreign policy. England has, with some degree of success, managed to get the United States to embrace England's goals as its own - this is most obvious when it comes to things like "entering World Wars on England's side" and somewhat more subtle when it comes to the goals of e.g. NATO. Which were - as per the words of its first Secretary General, an Englishman - “keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” Does that make the US a military dictator? Friend? Business partner? Maybe a bit of all three. Maybe it depends a bit on where and when you sit.
Over the very long course of history, the Russian empire has the ability to be a competitor for the United States. It happens to be an incompetent corrupt oligarchy which doesn’t care about economic growth. But there are possible-if-not-plausible futures where a Russian empire is a superpower again.
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